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Alteryx Designer Desktop Discussions

Find answers, ask questions, and share expertise about Alteryx Designer Desktop and Intelligence Suite.

Incremental Load concept for Alteryx workflows

Pankhudri20
8 - Asteroid

Hello,

 

I have workflows which will be run daily.

It essentially will load data upto 4 months in past.

However, it takes too long for the workflows to load since data files are huge.

 

Is there a way that to perform incremental load in alteryx?

Such that every day the workflows append the results to existing output files?

 

Thank you

Looking forward to a response soon!

 

Regards,

Pankhudri

11 REPLIES 11
CharlieS
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Hi @Pankhudri20 

 

What type of files are they? This kind of process is daily stuff with databases where you can specify where clauses, but with files the only way that comes to mind would be using Calgary files. Calgary files with an index on the data values would allow you to only return the records with the incremental date values you're interested in. 

Pankhudri20
8 - Asteroid

Hi @CharlieS ,

 

Thank you for your response.

I have daily excel files added to the shared folder.

These files are read in the workflows and takes a lot of time to load since the data volume is huge.

 

What are calgary files?

 

Regards,

Pankhudri

CharlieS
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

The daily file is that large, or the entire directory is and you only want to open the last day? If you only want to open a subset of the Excel files in the directory, that can be achieved using a Directory and Dynamic Input tool (or batch macro). 

Kaustubh17
9 - Comet

Hi @Pankhudri20 

Welcome to alteryx, i will suggest you use only those files which are latest i mean dynamic files that will reduce the workload as @CharlieS suggest he is right we can achieve this task by using dynamic tool and directory tool. for your reference i am attaching one link that might help you. 

 

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/How-to-dynamically-run-the-most-rec...

 

I hope this article resolve your issue.

 

Thanks,

Kaustubh

Pankhudri20
8 - Asteroid

Hi @CharlieS ,

 

Yes, I am reading the files using directory.

But if I read only a subset of files, will the whole output file be over written or new data will be appended?

 

Thank you

Regards,

Pankhudri

Kaustubh17
9 - Comet

No @Pankhudri20  append will not happen try at your end and check is it helpfull for you. In case you have further questions you can get back to me 

 

Thanks,

Kaustubh

CharlieS
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

@Pankhudri20 wrote:

Hi @CharlieS ,

 

Yes, I am reading the files using directory.

But if I read only a subset of files, will the whole output file be over written or new data will be appended?


Sounds like you've got the marginal/partial input part down

Outputting only the new records depends on what your output target is. Some support appending like a database, and others (.yxdb) do not support appending data and would have to be entirely re-written.

Pankhudri20
8 - Asteroid

Hi, @Kaustubh17 ,

 

Thank you for your response.

I am unable to find a solution for this.

Pankhudri20
8 - Asteroid

Hi @CharlieS ,

 

Yes, I want to append the data in the output files.

Or is there a way that everyday I copy the data in another file and append the latest output to that file?

 

That could be an indirect solution for this ?

But I dont know if I can store the output data in another file and append new output everyday?

 

Looking forward to your response !

 

Thank you

Regards,

Pankhudri

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