Control Containers with Mixed (Alteryx/In-Db) and Controlling the Flow

[john_watkins]

This thread stems from a question I asked a while ago here:  In-DB Tools Interaction with Container Controls - Alteryx Community 

There was never really an answer to that thread other than DON'T USE THE TWO which at this time was my only known option.

We have many workflows that are doing a simple data-merge by inserting new rows, updating existing rows, and bringing the unchanged records along in the process.  With Alteryx 2023.1, I have yet to find a way to make Control Containers just work natively.  This process also works well when you are in a mixed environment across many databases and both standard Alteryx tools and in-db.   My database is SnowFlake for reference, but I'm sure it works the same for anything where data is pushed and it takes some time to write/commit the data for other tools to use and allows you flow control.

Basic premise is to do your in-db process and stream out one row, one column back to Alteryx.   The Container Control will not allow you to use in-db as input to another control.  Something tells me they know there is an issue with a disconnected process.     Create dummy "JOINER" fields in both the first and second processes and do an inner join.   You can remove this field as it is not needed for your processing. 

If anyone has a better or alternate way I am open to suggestions.  This has been the only way we have verified that works every time.

[CailinS]

@john_watkins thanks again for sharing your workaround! as mentioned in the other post, I think this may be a good candidate to report through Mission Control (my.alteryx.com) to ensure Customer Support is aware of the behavior and can document your workaround as well! I did see this in the documentation https://help.alteryx.com/current/en/designer/tools/developer/control-container-tool.html#idp376967 that there is a limitation with In-DB connections spanning control containers and it looks like your flow above ensure that is not happening, so it makes sense that the above works.