Content Comparison

1. Hover over the BusinessData stream and select 

Image Removed Run Analysis

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   _run_analysis _run_analysis nopanel true

   , then click

1. Yes

1. to confirm.
2. Close the confirmation messages.
3. To check that the data has loaded into the stream, hover your mouse pointer over the stream and select 

Image Removed Stream Views

Image Removed Default View

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   _stream_views _stream_views nopanel true

    then select 

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   _view_default _view_default nopanel true

   . PhixFlow displays the data it has loaded into the stream.

Image Modified

Step 1

You now need to load the spreadsheet that contains the data into your application. 

• Open your application.
• Right-click 

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  _model _model nopanel true

   and select 

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  _add _add nopanel true

  . PhixFlow opens a properties tab for the model.
• In Basic Settings > Name enter: Businesses
• In the toolbar for the tab, click 

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  _model_display _model_display nopanel true

  .
• In the workspace on the left, PhixFlow opens an empty model.
• To load the Excel file, drag a 

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  _file_collector _file_collector nopanel true

   from the model toolbar into the model. 
• PhixFlow opens the properties for the file collector. Add a name: Business-File and 

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  _save _save nopanel true

   the properties.
• In the model, hover your mouse pointer over the file collector. PhixFlow displays a pop-up toolbar. Click 

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  _upload_file _upload_file nopanel true

  . Browse to the Excel file.
• In the upload window, click the  

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  _upload_button _upload_button nopanel true

   button. This process
  • automatically configures the file collector properties to upload the file
  • creates a stream ready to hold the data. Streams are like PhixFlow's internal spreadsheets. 

Step 2

Script

1. If you look in the stream properties, you can see PhixFlow had named the file using the file collector name. It already has the list of attributes - the table columns - from the first tab in the spreadsheet. 
   

   Key concept

   At this point the stream knows about the data, but does not contain any data. This is the time to check that stream properties and the data types and sizes are correct. You cannot make changes to the attributes once data is loaded.

   
   

2. Have a look at the stream properties. The Basic Settings → Period is set to variable. In general PhixFlow assumes you are processing large datasets in batches. We are going to be making individual changes to single data records (transactions) . So that PhixFlow optimises processing for this type of data, In the Period drop-down list, select Transactional.
3. In the attributes, there is one data type that we want to change. Currently the Description is set to be a string with a maximum of 500 characters. To remove this restriction, we can change it to a "big string" which can have 4000 characters.
4. As we are going to have multiple people making changes to the data, it will be useful to be able to see who made changes. To set PhixFlow to track this for you, tick Audit Manual Changes.
5. Image Modified Save your changes. Notice that the orange background tells you that the properties have unsaved changes. When you save, the background colour returns to light green.
6. It will be useful to have  the stream properties open later, so click the Pin icon.

Step 3

You can now load the data into the stream.

• In the model, hover our mouse pointer over the BusinessData stream and select Image Modified Run Analysis.
• In the confirmation window, click Yes to confirm.
• In the bottom left of the screen, PhixFlow shows some confirmation messages. Close these.
• We can now check that the data has loaded into the stream. In the model, hover your mouse pointer over the stream and select Image Modified Stream Views then select Image Modified Default View. This simply shows the data using a standard table view. You can see that the same data from the Excel spreadsheet is now loaded in the stream, with the additional columns we added to the Attributes.