As a designer, I need to output data only when no data quality errors are encountered within a workflow. I suppose that I wouldn't want to see any errors, but if I am writing multiple output files and errors are encountered during the output processes (e.g. #3 of 4 fails), then I'm kind of out of luck. So let's focus on data quality. If Nulls are encountered in "Actual" data or unjoined records are found or dates are out of range, you name the issue, I don't want to output any data to specific output tools. Work-arounds exist. I can output to a staging file and conditionally schedule or use a conditional runner macro to output to the production data. But what I really want to do is to stop an output tool from receiving any data to output.
Today I handle this by counting error records that would be caught by a TEST tool and appending the count of these bad records to the data that would go to output(s). I filter for IsNull([Count]) and only when 0 ERRORS are found by the test tool, can data be output. Otherwise null records are received by the output tool and it quietly makes no changes.
My ask is to configure an output tool to be disabled if ERRORs exist. That means that the LAST thing to happen in the execution of a workflow will be the output processes. They will all be blocking tools and can't happen until there are no tools left to run except for the outputs (configured as blocked). Maybe this is a big ask.
