Define Interface - A summary of the activity

Interface: An interface is a medium through which data is uploaded from ASCII files to application tables and downloaded from application tables to ASCII files. See Interface Utility Process

This activity is used to uniquely define each interface through which you will upload/download data. You can assign the following properties to the interface:

•  An interface code and description

• The interface group to which the interface will it belong; this will depend on whether the interface will upload or download data.

• The path of the ASCII file. If the interface type is “Upload“, the ASCII file will be the source file; if the interface type is “Download”, it will be the destination file.

• The column and row delimiters for the ASCII.

• The names of the procedures to be called at various stages of data transfer. For example, you can specify the download procedure, conversion procedure, validation procedure and update procedure used in an interface. Tell me more

• The names of the intermediate tables to be used, such as the download table, conversion table and validation tables.

• The schedule of the data transfer. You can specify whether it must be scheduled daily or weekly, or whether it must be non-recurring. If non-recurring, you are to specify the date and time of the data transfer. If weekly, you are to specify the day of the week in which the data transfer is scheduled to occur.

• The input parameters for downloading data. Tell me more

• The names of the procedures for uploading data. Tell me more

• The security permissions to specific users, to perform data transfer for  a specified date range.

This activity contains the following pages:

Defining interfaces: You can create the interface using define interface activity. Properties of the interface such as the download procedure, conversion procedure, download table, column delimiter, row delimiter etc can be specified, in order to perform the data transfer.

Specify procedures for upload: This page is used for specifying the stored procedures in a sequence, to upload data.

Specify parameters for download: You can specify the input parameters required, for filtering the data to be downloaded.

For example, from a specific employee table, we need to fetch only those employees whose ages are greater than 50 and whose salaries are less than Rs 30000. The input parameters for filtering data, in this example, are Age and Salary. 

Specify user  permissions: Security permissions to carry out the data transfer are defined, using this page.

The authorized user who has created the interface can opt to give permission to the required user–role combinations. He can also specify the date range for which the permission is available for the user, to perform data transfer using the interface.

Getting familiar with the pages inside

Prerequisites

Interface Group should be defined in Define Interface Group activity

User permissions must be set for the login user in Security Definitions component.

The date format must be set in User Preferences component

What you can do in this activity

Procedures called by the interface 

Data Upload

Data Download

Procedures called by the interface

The following are the names and descriptions of the procedures

• Download procedures are used while downloading data from application tables to ASCII files.

• Conversion procedures are used to convert data from ASCII format to SQL format, while uploading. They convert data from SQL format to ASCII format, while downloading.

• Validation procedures are used for performing functional validations of data and data type validations.

• Update procedures are used for updating data into SQL tables or application tables.

Data Upload

The process of data upload from the ASCII file to the application tables takes place in 3 stages.

• The data in the  ASCII file is converted from ASCII format to SQL format, through the conversion procedures you specify. This converted data is temporarily stored in an intermediate table called Conversion Table.

• Functional validation of this data is performed by validation  procedures. and then stored in an intermediate table called validation table.

• The validated data is updated in the application tables using updation procedures.

Data Download

The process of data download from application tables to the ASCII file takes place in 2 stages.

• Downloading of data from the application tables

• Conversion of the data from SQL format to ASCII format.