1.3.8 Read and Write Processors

Readers (see Reader) are used at the beginning of a process to connect to sources of data that are used in that process. Processes that do not involve matching (see Match Processors) will normally use a single Reader.

Readers can connect to any Staged Data (either a Snapshot, or a set of Staged Data written from another process) or Reference Data, a Data Interface (which may have Staged Data mapped to it), or to a Real time provider of messages.

Writers (see Writer) may be used at any point in a process to write results to Staged Data tables, Real-Time consumers of messages, or Data Interfaces. A process may contain any number of Writers, or no Writers.

Writers are connected to output filters from other processors in order to determine which records to write. The Writer will write out all records that are input to it from all its inputs, but will never write the same record twice. Within the Writer configuration, you can map attributes from your process to Staged Data attributes with names of your choosing.

Once data is in a Staged Data table, it can be exported to a Data Store (see Data Stores), or used in another process, by configuring the Reader in the new process to connect to the written Staged Data table.

The Merge Data Streams processor allows you to join together sources of records from multiple readers by mapping each source to a single target set of attributes.

This is included in the Read and Write family, as it does not transform data; it simply passes all records through.