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Processing Records Rejected by a Read File Operator

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:33:00 +0000

This is a companion article to Processing Rejected Records. That deals with records rejected by the Read Excel operator and applies to Read operators in other expressor Extensions and to the Read Custom operator.

Parsing records rejected by the Read File operator is simpler than parsing records from Read Excel and related operators. The Read File operator retains the sequence of fields and attributes when it writes them to the RecordData field of the Reject Record Schema. Because of that, it is not necessary for the Read File operator to write header records to describe the field and attribute sequence.

expressor tutorials

Tue, 08 May 2012 20:08:00 +0000

In this section you will find a collection of older tutorials that demonstrate the features of expressor Studio and the entire expressor Data Integration Platform. Though from a slightly older release, the content covered and steps performed are still valid. Please note that the user interface has varied slightly, but it should not effect the use of these tutorials.

You may also visit the http://community.expressor-software....s-tips-tricks/section of the exrpressor forum for our most recent collection of Videos, Tutorials, Tips and Troubleshooting steps.

If you are new to expressor,

Release Notes - expressor 3.6.0, 3.6.1, 3.6.2, 3.6.3, and 3.6.4

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:02:00 +0000

expressor 3.6.4 fixes four bugs, three in Studio (STU-4728, STU-4730, and STU-4744) and one having to do with reading Informix databases from dataflows running on Linux (PRO-2634). See the resolved issues section below for a description of each of the fixed bugs.

Also, see STU-4729in the known issues section below. STU-4729 describes an issue encountered when upgrading artifacts in a Repository Workspace.

Note that the Informix ODBC drivers shipped with expressor software do not support Unicode on Linux.

expressor 3.6.3 fixes three bug in Studio: one covering memory

Processing Rejected Records

Mon, 07 May 2012 14:00:00 +0000

When records produce errors because they violate constraints set on Composite Type
attributes or other reasons, the operator that encounters the error can handle them
by skipping them, aborting the dataflow, or rejecting the offending records. In some
cases, it is sufficient to simply send rejected records to a Write File operator
and examine the records in the output file. If the intent is, however, to correct
or otherwise use those records, examining each error and changing the data could
be very cumbersome. The more efficient approach would be to reprocess the records
as they come out the reject port.

Records rejected by input

Tracing ODBC Connections

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:54:00 +0000

When an ODBC database transaction fails, the error messages displayed by expressor Studio and the etask command might indicate that an exception occurred. To get enough information to diagnose the problem, you may need to turn on ODBC Tracing. That will capture all error messages. Note, however, that performance will degrade while ODBC Tracing is turned on.

An erro message might indicate specifically that an ODBC Exception has occurred. For example, the message "Exception 'GenericOdbcOpException"" clearly indicates a problem with an ODBC connection. ODBC Tracing can be useful, though, even when an ODBC-specific message is not generated. If Studio

Writing to Databases with Partitions

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:44:00 +0000

A database's locking scheme affects how the database handles data written to it on multiple partitions. For example, IBM's DB2 frequently locks the entire table when faced with multiple writes. Write operations on Netezza, Informix, and Sybase databases cannot be partitioned when Mode is set to Update or Delete.

The following table lists expected results for each of the databases expressor supports.

Big Data Applications with Join, Aggregate and Unique Operators

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

The Join, Aggregate and Unique operators compare multiple records before determining the output flow. All three operators have a Method property for specifying where the records are held while being compared. For smaller amounts of data, processing can be performed efficiently by holding records In Memory or On Disk.

With large amounts of data (100+ MB), processing In Memory or On Disk can reduce performance significantly and can even cause the application to fail. The recommended practice is to use the Sorted Method instead of processing In Memory or On Disk. When the Method property is set to Sorted, the operators do not need to store records temporarily because they are presorted.

To presort the input records

Removing Constraints During a Dataflow

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:10:00 +0000

Constraints are often set on Composite Type attributes to cleanse or filter data as it is read from a source, such as an RDBMS. Once the cleansing or filtering is done, the constraints are no longer needed. Nevertheless, the constraints defined for the Composite Type attributes continue to be applied as the attributes are propagated through the dataflow. This requires extra processing and thus can slow performance of the application. For that reason, you might want to remove the constraints from Composite Type attributes used downstream in the dataflow.

There are other reasons as well for removing constraints in the middle of a dataflow. You might want to apply a different constraint downstream, as when processing results in a string length would fail the

Release Notes - expressor 3.5.3

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 03:12:23 +0000

The version 3.5.3 release consists of updated versions of the extensions:

Excel Extension Version 1.1
QlikView Extension Version 1.1
Salesforce Extension Version 1.2

Installation

To install the 3.5.3 Extensions, expressor Studio 3.5.2 must be installed on the system.

Start expressor Studio.
Select Manage Extensions from the Studio tab's drop-down menu.
Select the Installs tab in the Manage Extensions dialog box.
Exploring the expressor Desktop Edition

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:38:00 +0000
When working with expressor Studio under a Community Edition license key you have the ability to develop a dataflow that uses any of the operators included within Studio or added by enabling an extension such as the Excel Library, QlikView Library or Salesforce Library. However, to run dataflows that use components from these extensions you will need to install a Desktop Edition license key.

Installing a Desktop Edition license key enables features that are inactive when using a Community Edition license key.
- Dataflows that include operators provided within extensions may be run from within Studio.
- Deployment packages may be created.
- Dataflows