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Dictionary of Metamerge Integrator Terms

Admin-tool

The Metamerge Server consist of a Java engine running a configuration file.  The configuration file defines the server.  The configuration file is a text-file, but you usually edit it by a graphical user interface called the Administrator or the Admin-tool.  The admin-tool is installed with the product.

AL

Shorthand for AssemblyLine

AssemblyLine

The basic work object within a Server.  It consist of Connectors, Parsers and business logic.  Connectors typically feed data in and out of the AssemblyLine.

Attribute

Contained in Entries and holding Values (single or multiple). See also Parameter

Attribute Mapping

Mapping of Attributes from the data source to the AssemblyLine. To be more precise this is mapping from the raw connector attributes to the work entry.

Computed Changes

A special feature of the Update Connector mode

Components

The Metamerge Integrator consists of a kernel being the Server and the Admin-Tool.  In addition, we talk about components such as Connectors, EventHandlers and Parsers.  These can, to a certain extent, be distributed and upgraded independent of the kernel.

Connector

What plugs into your data source in order to read it.  Inside the AssemblyLine we differ between the Raw Connector (class name rscConnector) and the AssemblyLine Connector (class name rscTaskComponent),  the latter wrapping the first and having another set of methods. 

Connectors can work in different modes, iterate, delete, update, add only, lookup and passive. An example for the JDBC Connector illustrate these.  

See also Attribute Mapping

Delta

A special term used in Iterator mode used when synchronising a master and a slave.  Click here for more information

Entry

A term used both for the entry object but also for the top level 'item' used by the AssemblyLine and Connectors.  An entry typically corresponds to a row in a database table/view, a record from a file or an object in a directory.  Entries contain Attributes which contains Values.  For example, an iterator might return the next person (the entry), having the attributes city, name and phone.  The values of the three attributes would be London, Holmes and 5632. 

Epilog

A piece of code that, if present, is run after the AssemblyLine data flow ends.  It typically contains saving of parameter to be used next time the assemblyline runs (see task.getParam and task.setParam). See also Prolog.

EventHandler

Will wait for a specific event, and perform an action. Usually used to decide when AssemblyLines are to be started.  Will usually pass an initial work Entry to the AssemblyLine.  See also Listener for a more primitive version.

External Properties

A way of externalising certain Component parameters as filename, user, password etc.  See Configuration File in the technical documentation.  If the parameter is not to be used as Component parameter, you probably want to use Task Parameters.

Integrator

The name of the product.  Sometime referred to as Metamerge Integrator or the Integrator. It consist of the Admin Tool and the Server.

Link Criteria

Used in order to tell Update, Lookup and Delete Connectors what to access.  Briefly speaking it links an attribute from the AssemblyLine to a field (attribute, column) in the data-source.  For more information click here.

Listener

A more primitive and more flexible way of doing what EventHandler do:  Waiting for an event and take action when it happens.  Less GUI than the EventHandler.

Mode

Connectors have modes: The mode describes what the Connector will be used for: Iterate, AddOnly, Lookup, Update, Delete (a Passive mode is available as well).  See Connector concept for more on modes.

Null Value Behavior

How Attribute Mapping is to be done when attribute values are missing.

Prolog

Code that, if present, is run before the AssemblyLine data flow starts. Code can be run both before and after all Connectors are initialised. See also Epilog.

Properties

Contained in Entries and holding a single value.  Mostly used in Event Handler Action maps. See also Attribute

Raw Connector

The part of the that sees the external data source. See also Connector

Script Component

Something that looks like a Connector in the Admin Tool: It can be regarded as Connector without pre-configured input/output capabilities. It is inserted by a separate Script button in the Admin Tool and should not be confused by the Script Connector.

Script Connector

A Script Connector is a Connector where you have written the functionality yourself:  It is empty in the sense that in contrary to ready rolled Connector, the Script Connector does not have the base methods getNextEntry, findEntry etc. implemented.  Not to be confused with the Script Component.

Server

The Admin-tool lets you define servers.  Once you have defined a server, it will be started from the command line (see Command Line Options) and perform the actual work.  The server might run AssemblyLines directly, but it might also start EventHandlers that will start AssemblyLines when needed.

Task

By convention all threads ( AssemblyLines, EventHandlers etc) are referred to as the "task" object. See task object.

Task Parameters

Parameters that will be saved and loaded from a file. Filename to be set in the AssemblyLine Setting tab. See Task Parameters for syntax. See also External Properties.

Update

One of the Connector modes.  Update will perform a lookup for the object you want to update, and if it is found it will modify the existing entry.  If it does not exist it will add it.  See also Computed Changes.

Value

See Entry and Attribute

Work Entry

An instance of the Entry class called work. If no work Entry exist, non-Iterator  Connectors will not be called:  The work Entry is an object that lets Connectors share data within an AssemblyLine.  If you don't get work from an iterator, you can create it in the Prolog by using task.setWork():

init_work = system.newEntry(); // Create a new Entry object
init_work.setAttribute("uid", "cchateauvieux"); // populate it
task.setWork(init_work); // make it known as work to the Connectors

 

 

 

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  Metamerge Integrator version 4.6 ©Copyright Metamerge AS 2000-2002 Last edited 2002-06-10 contact us