Data Transformation Using Custom Data Flows
You may have the need for a type of Data Flow that is uniquely specific to your organization or industry. Or, you may have a commonly used calculation and want to stop authoring the same script calculation repeatedly. In this scenario, you would simply author an Informer Plugin to register your desired functionality.
Let’s say you manage the Order Processing Department and your users commonly work with result sets that contain an ‘Order Quantity’ Field, a ‘Unit Price’ Field, and a ‘Zip Code’ field. Your processors then calculate an order sub-total from the Order Quantity and Unit Price Fields, a tax amount based on Zip Code, a Shipping & Handling Fee, an estimated delivery date based on Order Quantity and Zip Code, and a total amount from the whole lot.
In this scenario you have a choice:
- rely on your processors to calculate each of these correctly for every order that comes through the system
- or, you could author an Informer Plugin as part of your Flow that prompts for the required input fields from the existing results and amends each record with the appropriate values, all before the user retrieves the Dataset.