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Alteryx Designer Desktop Discussions

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indb questions

becki
8 - Asteroid

I tried to look at the "tool mastery" link but the indb tools aren't listed there.  How do i know, if i have a lot of indb and static input tools, in a workflow, when do you "stop until done" and when not?  i'm still getting used to a gui programming language where all the inputs are started at the same time and I'm joining data from both static and indb inputs.  does Alteryx read in the entire static input, in the case of joining a static and an indb input, then try to join them?  if i have inputs that need to start later on from the initial inputs/joins, how do tell them to not start until the previous ones are one?  thanks

 

6 REPLIES 6
KOBoyle
11 - Bolide
danrh
13 - Pulsar

It is my understanding that Alteryx optimizes how to input and join data, so for the most part you don't need to worry about sequencing. Could you provide a use-case where you need some Inputs to be read before/after others?  Most of the time you shouldn't try to deal with these situations and should just let Alteryx do its thing.

 

As a side note, Block Until Done is a highly misunderstood tool. What it does is gather the records from upstream, then release them all at once, first through stream 1, then stream 2, then stream 3. Note that it does NOT wait until all the tools downstream in stream 1 finish prior to releasing stream 2 --- it waits until the last record leaves via stream 1. So take that into consideration before using it. I find the tool to be of most use when I'm reading from a table (Input) and then writing to that same table (Output). I want the read to completely finish before I write, so a Block Until Done achieves that as it gathers the data, allowing the Input to finish, and then releases it to be written back to the table.

 

Anyway, hope this sheds some light. Feel free to reply back with an example to see if we can't help out.

becki
8 - Asteroid

thanks! 

becki
8 - Asteroid

I have two inputs, right now one is a indb and one is static.  bring them in, join them, take the output of the join (the joined part) , edit some fields in that output, add a field called "nameplate" then join to a new input (looking for engine codes based on name plate and other stuff), manipulate that joined data, changing fields, then join to another static input, etc..   does that make sense?

 

KOBoyle
11 - Bolide

My understanding is the same as @danrh. In the few occasions when I've used the In DB tools, I saw nothing unusual that led me to think that specific sequencing or Block Until Done was needed.

becki
8 - Asteroid

I'll try changing my inputs from static files to indb and see what happens.  thanks

 

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