DataFlux Data Management Studio 2.5: User Guide

Data Sorting Node

You can add a Data Sorting node to a data job to re-order your data set at any point in a data job. For example, you might want to sort employee data by last name, first name, and then location. Although you might initially sort your data in a data input node, like Data Source, a new order might become important later in your flow. Data Sorting makes that possible, resulting in a re-ordered data set. Once you have added the node, you can double-click it to open its properties dialog. The properties dialog includes the following elements:

Name - Specifies a name for the node.

Notes - Enables you to open the Notes dialog. You use the dialog to enter optional details or any other relevant information for the input.

The Sorting section of the dialog contains the following elements:

Available Fields - Displays the data fields that you can sort. The items available in this list are dependent on your data source(s) and any steps preceding the Data Sorting node in your data job.

Note:DataFlux Data Management Studio automatically makes all fields available to the next step in your data job. You need to selec onlyt the fields you want to sort you data by.

Selected Fields - Displays the fields you have selected for sorting. For each selected field, use the drop-down in the Sort Order column to specify whether that field should be sorted in ascending (A-B-C, 1-2-3) or descending (Z-Y-X, 9-8-7) order. You can also use the up and down arrows to change the order of the selected fields.

Note: Records are sorted according to the listed order of selected fields. For example, if your selected fields are First Name and Last Name, Sort will order records primarily by First Name and secondarily by Last Name.

Note that if your current location is not large enough to accomodate the temp file created by the SASSORT option, you might want to specify a temporary disk location. You can do this by setting the TKUTILLOC environment variable prior to launching the dmpexec process. An additional choice would be to add new code to DK and process startup to set this value based on the BASE/SORTTEMP option.

You can access the following advanced properties by right-clicking the Data Sorting node:

• ALTERNATE_HANDLING
• BASE/SORTBYTES
• BASE/SORTMERGES
• BASE/SORTTEMP
• BASE/SORTTHREADS
• BY_GROUP
• CASE_FIRST
• COLLATION
• CHUNKSIZE
• FIXED_WIDTH
• LOCALE
• NOCODEGEN
• NODUPS
• NUMERIC
• SORT_FIELDS
• SORT_KEEPVAR
• STABLE
• STRENGTH
• USE_SASSORT