Setting General Preferences
General preferences allow you to specify the User Defined Connections Location and Project and Artifact Portability Options.
User Defined Connections Location
The User Defined Connections Location preference specifies the location for saving the connections you create. This option also:
• Enables you to reuse your connections in other maps and profiles, and any connection tab.
• Sets the location that browse dialogs start in when loading or saving connections when the User Defined Connection text box is blank.
As you develop projects you establish connections to various source or target data. The User Defined Connections preference mitigates the need to recreate those connections, and centralizes your connections in one place.
Note: User defined connections can be created from the source or target tab, in the Map Editor. For more information see,
Saving and Reusing a Connection. After configuring a successful connection to some data, you can save the connection details or the schema details using the Save option in the connection section and the schema section respectively. The saved connection or the saved schema can be used to write to a future target or can be used with a process component.
Project and Artifact Portability Options
The Project and Artifact Portability Options preference specifies how newly added artifacts residing in the workspace are saved. There are three options. These options do not apply to data and log files.
Best Practice — You may be sharing your integration projects and artifacts with other developers. This can cause portability (from one developer to the next) issues if artifact paths are absolute paths and each developer has different workspace locations. To avoid these issues, select either the Convert referenced artifact paths to relative paths option, or the Convert referenced artifact paths to workspace root macro paths option.
IMPORTANT! The Project and Artifact portability options apply to artifacts and NOT to data or log files. Also, these options apply to newly added artifacts that are within the workspace and not to artifacts that already exist or are outside the workspace.
To set the general preferences:
1. Go to Options > Preferences.
The Preferences dialog box is displayed.
2. In the left-pane, expand DataConnect and click General.
3. In User Defined Connections Location, click Browse and specify the location to store the user-defined connection files. The default location is C:\Users\<username>\Actian\DataConnect\UDConnections.
Note: User defined connections can be created from the source or target tab, in the Map Editor. For more information see,
Saving and Reusing a Connection. After configuring a successful connection to some data, you can save the connection details or the schema details using the Save option in the connection section and the schema section respectively. The saved connection or the saved schema can be used to write to a future target or can be used with a process component.
4. In Project and Artifact Portability Options, select one of the following:
• Convert referenced artifact paths to relative paths - converts newly referenced artifact(s) absolute paths to a path that is relative to the artifact’s parent map, process, or data profile.
Note: An absolute path for an external schema within the Map Wizard cannot be converted to a relative or WORKSPACE_ROOT macro path until after the map is saved. After you save the map, re-browse to your schema file and it will then be converted based on your portability option.
• Convert referenced artifact paths to workspace root macro paths - converts newly referenced artifacts absolute paths to a path relative to $(WORKSPACE_ROOT) if the artifact is within the specified workspace. Also, DataConnect automatically adds WORKSPACE_ROOT global macro if the macro name does not exist. The value for this macro will be set to the current workspace location in the macro definition file even if you switch the workspaces.
• Leave absolute referenced artifact paths alone - does not convert absolute referenced artifact paths automatically.
5. Click Apply and then click OK.
The settings are saved.
Last modified date: 02/09/2024