Properties Dialog Field Descriptions

The fields included in the properties dialog vary according to the view model operator or element you select to edit. This reference table describes the fields and lists the operators each one applies to.

The properties that appear in all operators and elements are listed first in the table; thereafter properties are listed alphabetically.

Property	Operators used by	Description
Name	All	Click in the Name field and choose a column name from the pull-down list to change it. Column names are used in expressions to access data, so they’re bound by the same constraints as other variable names: column names must start with a letter underscore and must contain only letters, numbers, and underscore characters. Because it’s common to access column data using the column name, the name of each column in a give schema should be unique. Note: If your schema has column names that do not conform to these norms, you must use the methods in the ResultSet object to access them by position (using a 1-based index). We suggest setting up your database operations to alias any columns with questionable names so they don’t cause difficulties in WorkSpace Data Federation. When you add a new column, WorkSpace Data Federation chooses the next available column from the input, which may not necessarily be the column you want to add. For transform definitions in Input Sources, if you use the Browse XPath button to choose the XML node for a given column, WorkSpace automatically sets the column’s name to the name of that node (unless you already edited the name).

Description	All	The description is optional. When you mouse over an operator in the view model editor, WorkSpace displays the description in a tool tip.
Condition	Iterator	(Optional) Enter a Boolean expression. While the Boolean expression evaluates to true, the Iterator operator continues to iterate, re-executing its primary input. When the Boolean expression evaluates to false, the iteration stops. If you’re using a range input, WorkSpace first checks for the end of the range result set. If its rows aren’t yet exhausted, WorkSpace evaluates your condition as well, and if your expression evaluates to false, iteration stops.
Execute Inputs in Parallel	Iterator	Normally, the Iterator operator waits to advance to the next iteration until the result set from the previous iteration has no more rows of data left. If you check this box, the Iterator will iterate until the condition expression evaluates to false, queuing up the result sets and passing them downstream as they are requested. If the elements upstream of the Iterator involve operations external to the current data service (such as Input Source elements), they will essentially all be executed simultaneously, generally resulting in improved performance.
Expression	Aggregate, Group By	Click in the column’s Expression field to edit it. Enter any JavaScript expression you want to pass to the aggregate function, including simple column names from the incoming result set. Click the “...” button to open the Edit Expression dialog if you need more room than the table cell provides. You can also right click (either in the table cell directly, or in the Edit Expression dialog) to show a context menu of column names, variables, and functions that you can paste into the Expression field. The context menu is called the expressions menu.
Definition	Generator	Click in a column’s definition field to enter an expression that will be evaluated each time through the loop to set the value of the column. The expression should evaluate to a value that’s appropriate for the column type you choose.
Direction	Order By	Choose the direction in which this column should be sorted—either “Ascending” or “Descending.”
First Row Value	Input Source	This column is not editable. It displays the values in the first row of your file, to help you when naming the columns or specifying their types.
Function	Aggregate, Group By	Click the Function field and use the pull-down list to choose the function you want to use for this column. The value of the Expression field will be passed to this function for each row in the incoming result set. The aggregate functions are described elsewhere.
Generate only Distinct (Non-duplicate) Rows	Projection,Union	Eliminate from the output any row whose data duplicates that of a row already in the output.
Increment	Iterator	Enter expressions that update the variables you initialized in the previous field. If you’re using a variable to control the iteration, increment its value here. If you’re using any other variables that upstream operators need to access, update their values here as well. If you’re using a range input, you can update the variables based on the values of the columns in the current row of the range input. You can enter any JavaScript code here that would be valid inside a function body.
Initialize	Iterator	Enter expressions that set up any variables you need, either to control the iteration or to be made available to upstream operators. You can enter any JavaScript code here that would be valid inside a function body.
Keep in Schema	Group By	Determines whether the Group By column in question will appear in the output schema of the operator. To change its value, click in the field and choose either “Yes” or “No” from the pull-down.


Precision	Aggregate, Generator, Group By, Custom	Precision does not apply to all types, and the meaning of a column’s Precision field depends on the type: For types BINARY, LONGVARBINARY, and VARBINARY, precision is the size of the column data in bytes. For types CHAR, LONGVARCHAR, and VARCHAR, precision is the size of the column data in characters. For types DECIMAL and NUMERIC, precision is the total number of digits in the column data (including digits on both sides of the decimal point).
Range Input	Iterator	If you have connected two inputs to your Iterator, designate one of them as the range input using this pull-down list. If you’re using a range input, the Iterator operator automatically loops through each row in the range result set, stopping when there are no more rows. You must set up other expressions to set the value of any variables based on the range result set’s columns. However, you need not maintain your own iteration control variables (such as a counter that you increment). When you configure a range input, WorkSpace automatically checks for the end of the result set and terminates the loop under that condition. You can add an expression in the Condition field (see above) to cause the looping to terminate while there are still rows left in the range input, but you cannot cause the iteration to continue after all rows in the range result set have been used.
Scale	Aggregate, Generator, Group By, Custom	Scale, which applies only to DECIMAL and NUMERIC types, is the total number of digits in the column data (including digits on both sides of the decimal point) .
Type	Aggregate, Custom, Generator, Group By, Input Source	Specify the type of the column’s data. Be sure to specify a numeric type (INTEGER, for example) for aggregate columns that use the Count function. For Input Source elements, when you create a new column its type defaults to VARCHAR (data that can be transformed for input is by nature text-based). If you change this, make sure that the data in the document can be parsed as the type you choose. (For example, if the document has the value “foo” and you choose INTEGER for the type, you will get an error when you execute your data service.) Column data types in WorkSpace Data Federation correspond to common SQL types of the same names. Types available are ARRAY BIGINT BINARY BIT BOOLEAN BLOB CHAR CLOB DATE DECIMAL DISTINCT DOUBLE FLOAT INTEGER JAVA_OBJECT LONGVARBINARY LONGVARCHAR NULL NUMERIC OTHER REAL REF SMALLINT STRUCT TIME TIMESTAMP TINYINT VARBINARY VARCHAR ORACLE_CURSOR
XPath	Input Source (XML transform)	Specify an XPath expression that defines the node of the XML document whose value you want to use for this column. The XPath is relative to the repeating element you chose on the previous page of the wizard. WorkSpace simplifies the task of setting the XPath by providing a browser you can use to choose a node. This should be sufficient in all but the most complex cases, requiring a knowledge of XPath syntax only for highly specialized applications. To access the browser, select the column you’re defining and click Browse XPath to choose the node. Make sure you choose the text node (with the T icon) if that’s what you want.