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Quick Start Guide

New install? Also check out: I just installed, how do I get started?

Note: The default user is 'administrator' and the default password is 'manager'.

What do I type in for Server?

The Server name is either the TCP/IP address or DNS name for the server that is currently running the BlueSky Integration Studio Server (either Enterprise Server Edition or Personal Server Edition). For instance; 'myserver.mycompany.com' or '123.45.67.222' might be valid server addresses. If you are running the Personal Server then your server name is simply 'localhost' since you are running the server on your local PC.

Let's build a job!

This will be a very simple job that will map data from a text file into another text file. During your server installation a Folder was created under the Program Files Folder called VISSampleData which contains a text file called VISSample.txt. Since we don't know which databases you have in your organization, this provides a really easy way to walk you through the basics of BlueSky Integration Studio!

1. Select File->New->Job Design. A new 'Untitled' designer window will come up.

2. Drag a Text Object from the toolbar onto the designer window.

3. Click on the Text Object so that it is selected and select the View->Properties menu item (or F4).

4. The properties window is where you define your data source and its attributes so that BlueSky Integration Studio knows how to read your file or database. Your screen should look something like this:

5. Click on the FilePath property and enter or select: C:\Program Files\VISSampleData\VISSample.txt

6. Now we must define the Column Layout for this text file. Click the ColumnLayout property, and then click the Ellipse button.

7. The Column Layout window is common for all Data objects. This is where you will define the structure of your file or database. Normally, you would select the column layout from the repository so you do not have to manually enter this information. However, lets get a feel for the tool! We only have 3 columns in our text file. Enter the column names as seen below:

8. Once you have entered the column layout, Click the Save Schema to Repository button (3 button from the left) on the toolbar. This will save this layout into the BlueSky Integration Studio's repository so that you never have to enter it again!

- The Save Schema window will come up prompting you to name the ColumnLayout Schema.

- Select SharedDomain in the Application Domain drop down list.

- In the Name field, enter: MySample and click OK. You will get a message that says "Metadata successfully saved".

- Click OK to close the ColumnLayout window.

9. Make sure the rest of the properties are set to the following:

- DelimiterType: Tab

- FirstRowColumnHeaders: True

- LayoutType: Delimited

- Name: My Sample Text File

10. Now that we have the job started, lets Save it! Click the File->Save menu item.

The Save Window

- You have the ability to save your jobs in your own custom folders which helps keeps things organized! Click on the Jobs tree item and then Click the New Folder icon. Enter the name: MySamples and click OK.

- Now click on the MySamples Folder. You will notice that the Folder text above changes to: Jobs\MySamples\ indicating where the job will be saved.

- Enter Sample1 in the Design Name text box. This will be the name of your job. Job names must be unique with an Application Domain and cannot contain any spaces or special characters. To save this job, click OK.

11. Now with the My Sample Text File object selected in the designer (click on it to select it), select the View->View Sample Data menu item. This will allow you to see the data in the file to ensure your object is setup correctly! Click Close when completed.

12. Drag and Drop a new Text Data object onto the designer.

13. Drag and Drop a new Join Object onto the designer. The Join object is located in the Process Objects folder on the toolbar.

14. Click the Line icon on the toolbar. You will notice that it becomes pushed. This indicates that you can now draw a line from one object to another on the designer window. Click, keeping the mouse button down, on the My Sample Text File object and drag a line to the Join object and release the mouse button.

15. Click the Line icon on the toolbar again and drag a line from the Join object to the new Text Data object. You are basically drawing the flow of your data. You screen should look something like the following:

16. Define the output Text Data object with the following properties (select the object and press F4 to get quick access to the properties window). Here you will define all properties except for the ColumnLayout. We will define that in the next step...

- Action: InsertOnly

- DelimiterType: Comma

- FirstRowColumnHeaders: False

- FilePath: C:\outfile.txt (or wherever you want to put it...)

- Name: My Output File

- Alias: out

17. I know you don't want to re-type all those columns! Hopefully you did Step 8 and saved the ColumnLayout from your input file in the repository. If so, select the ColumnLayout property and click the Ellipse button. (If not, enter the columns as shown below, or go back to perform Step 8)

18. Click the first button in the toolbar (Load Schema from Repository). Click through the tree down to SharedDomain\Custom, you should see your saved ColumnLayout from Step 10! Simply double click it to select it.

19. After selecting the item you will get a column selection window that will allow you to select individual fields that you would like to use from this Metadata object. The default is that all fields are pre-selected. Simply click OK.

20. All the fields from your input data object are now also defined in your output data object. Add one more column called MyCalc and define it as a Decimal, size 16, decimals 7 (see below). To add a row, you will click on the last row and press the down arrow key.

21. Click OK to save and close this window.

Mapping Columns

22. Now your data sources are defined and you can begin mapping the individual columns! Double click on the Join object in the designer window. This will be bring you to the mapping window.

23. On the left is your input data source and on the right is your output data source. Simply drag each column from the input data source and drop them into the columns in the output data source. You will notice that it automatically inserts the VB.NET Keyword "Return" before your columns, that is because behind that column is a code-behind window where you have complete control over your data transformation using Visual Basic® .NET!!

24. To demonstrate the VB.NET code behind feature, click the input cell for the new column (MyCalc) that we added to the output data source. Then, click the button on the right of that cell.

25. The code behind window will come up. This is where you have complete control to write any kind of VB.NET code you need to transform your data. BlueSky Integration Studio automatically builds Function wrappers for all your columns so all you have to do is fill in the code! The simplest method would be to just drag over your columns, in which BlueSky Integration Studio will automatically "Return" the value of that column. However; in this example we want to write a little code to calculate a value for the MyCalc column. Enter the code as seen below into the code window.

As you can see, the code is checking the value of a1.ID to see if it equals 10. If it does, it multiplies the a1.Amount value by 2, otherwise it simply returns the value of the a1.Amount column. This is where the Alias comes in handy. Each Data Object in the designer has an Alias property which you can define or just use the defaults. This really speeds up coding! Rather than having to enter "My Sample Text File" all over the place, you simply use the Alias.columnname to access the data.

As you type you will also notice that when you type in a1. that a list of column names will drop down allowing you to select which column you want. The code window also features automatic syntax highlighting.

Click the OK button to continue.

Filtering data

26. You can also filter the data that flows into your output data sources! Click the Filter Arrow and enter the code below in the code behind window.

The Filter code behind window creates a function called AllowPassThrough for each output data object. This function returns a boolean True or False which determines whether each record gets loaded or not. In this example we have written some VB.NET code that checks to see if the value of the a1.ID column is not equal to 100. If it is not equal to 100 we allow it to pass through by Returning True, Else we return False and the record is not permitted to pass through to the output data object. You must return a boolean True or False.

Click OK.

27. Select the File->Save option to save your completed job.

Compiling jobs

28. To run your job, you simply need to compile it and run it!

See: Compiling Jobs

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