Complex schema metadata

Overview

Just as all record streams pass the metadata of the record schema from tool to tool, complex record streams also have complex schema metadata that is passed from tool to tool. For example, if you read files using the Complex Text Input tool, its output connector will contain the complex schema metadata defined in the tool. Downstream tools access that metadata to carry out their work (for example the Complex Splitter tool will know what record types are available).

Complex schema metadata is also stored in DLD files, so writing a complex stream to a DLD file will result in the complex metadata for the records being available when the stream is read back from the DLD file.

Using the Complex Input tool's Export metadata option, you can extract the separator characters defined in the metadata into a secondary output. This produces a set of key/value pairs with the following structure.

X12

Key	Meaning
`separator`	The data separator.
`separator2`	The component separator.
`end_of_record`	The value read from the end of the ISA segment (the segment terminator). If there is a suffix, it will be part of the end_of_record value.

Edifact

Key	Meaning
`separator`	The data element separator.
`separator2`	The sub-element separator.
`end_of_record`	The value read from the end of the ISA segment (the segment terminator).
`escape`	The escape character (to remove the special meaning of delimiter characters in values).