The posts in this series assume that you have some level of familiarity with ODI. The concepts of Model, Project, Interface and Package are used here assuming that you understand these concepts in the context of ODI. If you need more details on these elements, please refer to the ODI Tutorial for a quick introduction, or to the complete ODI documentation for detailed information on these concepts.

In our last post in this series, we looked into passing parameters to dynamically set the name of the file that we want to process. An alternative may be to parse a list of file names that would be stored in a table in your database and to loop over this list to process all files.

To perform this, we will need to perform the following operations:
- Create a variable to store the file name, and a second variable that we will use as a cursor to point in our table
- Define a package and use the variables to loop over the different values in the table

If you need help with the creation of variables please refer to our post on the usage of variables in ODI Interfaces and Packages.

1. DEFINITION OF THE VARIABLES

1.1 The Counter Variable

We will start here with the definition of a variable that we will use to loop through your list of files. Let’s call it Counter. I usually use an alphanumeric variable and define the SQL query as being

select #Counter+1 from dual

(Note: the code would vary for non Oracle databases). I find alphanumeric variables easier to process than using numerics as numerics come with decimal values and may require conversions based on where and how you use them. One advantage of numeric variables though is that you can use ODI to increment their values when you select the Assign action on the variable.

1.2 The FileName Variable

For this example, we assume that the file names are stored into a table called ODI_FILES_TABLE. This table has only one column with the file names, called FILE_NAME. And we store the table in an Oracle database. You can easily adapt the code for different table structures or databases. Here we will parse the table taking advantage of the ROWNUM returned by the Oracle database.

Create a Variable in the same project, and call it FileName. Define the following query for the FileName variable:

select FILE_NAME
from (select FILE_NAME, ROWNUM COUNTER from ODI_FILES_TABLE)
where COUNTER=#Counter

Note that we are using our fist variable to retrieve one record only. To run this statement, remember that the Counter variable MUST have a value – otherwise the where clause would not be valid.

2. DEFINITION OF THE PACKAGE AND DESIGN OF THE LOOP

We will now create a package to design our loop. In the package, drag and drop the Counter variable and set the action to Set Variable. Assign the value 1 to the variable (select Assign in the properties window and enter the value 1 in the text box below the Assign selection).

Drag and drop the FileName variable in the package after the Counter variable. Set the action on the variable to Refresh Variable. In case of success after the refresh, execute any procedures or interfaces where the FileName is used. In case of failure of the refresh, execute a last step to indicate you are done: a failure here would indicate that you have exhausted all files listed in the table. In our example we are sending an email, but you could execute another branch of your process.

After the execution of the procedures and interfaces, add the Counter variable again, but this time set the action to Refresh Variable: this will increment the value of the variable. (If you are using a numeric variable, you can replace this with a Set Variable action and set the operation to Increment).

Then loop back to the refresh step of the FileName variable: this will either select the next file in the list… or fail and exit the loop.

3. BEYOND THE FIRST EXAMPLE

3.1 A Cleaner Exit

For a cleaner exit than the one described here, you may want to use a third variable where keep track of the number of files in your table with the following query:

select count(*) from ODI_FILES_TABLE

Refresh this new variable at the beginning of the package. You can then compare your Counter variable (using the action Evaluate Variable) to that value and exit the loop when you reach this value.

3.2 Guarantying that the tables are found in all Contexts

Instead of hard-coding schema names in your variable refresh queries, remember to use the ODI Substitution Method that will automatically rebuild the schema name in all contexts: odiRef.getObjectName. For instance:

select FILE_NAME
from (select FILE_NAME, ROWNUM COUNTER from < % = odiRef.getObjectName("ODI_FILES_TABLE") % >)
where COUNTER=#Counter

MORE ON VARIABLES IN ODI

For more information on ODI variables, please refer to the ODI Users Guide (part of the Documentation Library that comes with the ODI installation), in particular the entry "Creating and Using Variables"

All Screenshots were taken using version 10.1.3.5 of ODI. Actual icons and graphical representations may vary with other versions of ODI.