Copy stage active or passive?

eostic · Post by **eostic** » Wed Jan 04, 2012 8:33 pm

In reality, does it matter? The formal terms "passive" and "active" have deep roots in Server.....and were later applied to EE Stages based on a variety of properties and behaviors. I'm not convinced that the definitions have much meaning (nor should they) as they did in the past. Certain constructs in Server still depend on whether a Stage is active or passive....are there such dependencies in EE? Maybe we need entirely new definitions....or maybe just concern ourselves with what the Stage "does".

Ernie

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Wed Jan 04, 2012 10:24 pm

Interesting (?) historical fact: version 1.0 of the ORABULK stage was written as an active stage (even though data-source-facing stages were meant to be passive) so that it could support before/after subroutines; one could employ an after-stage subroutine to use ExecSH (or ExecDOS) to invoke sqlldr, because the stage did not have any automatic mechanism for doing so.

qt_ky · Post by **qt_ky** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 8:47 pm

The Copy stage is still marked as Active on my 8.5 server, although it sounds like its role is passive.

From the Server Job Developer's Guide:

... How does the server engine define a process? It is here that the distinction between active and passive stages becomes important. Actives stages, such as the Transformer and Aggregator, perform processing tasks, while passive stages, such as the Sequential File stage and Hashed File stage, are reading or writing data sources and provide services to the active stages. ...

Are "active" and "passive" defined anywhere else?

atulgoel · Post by **atulgoel** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:20 am

Its a Passive stage as it does not modify the data. It can only change the metadata not the actual data.

qt_ky · Post by **qt_ky** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 8:11 am

Are you saying the Copy stage type property is indeed marked as Passive in your repository? I doubt my server is the only one where it's marked as Active.

eostic · Post by **eostic** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 9:01 am

See how silly this conversation is? Copy is an EE Stage, and the history of the definitions we're discussing is based on "Server" jobs and stages. I'm sure that Lee could chime in and give us the old rules about things like implied transformers and such, but again...the significance isn't there, except for rare circumstances like how and when and why to use things like IP stages in Server Jobs....but even there, the compiler will tell you if you are using them incorrectly.....

(my two cents).

qt_ky · Post by **qt_ky** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 9:36 am

Yeah it is silly. My point earlier also was where and how are these terms defined for parallel stages, as it's covered in the server job guide and not in the PX job guide.