General task settings

ID

Task name

Enter a descriptive name. By default, the name of the task type is entered, e.g., "Copy/Move/Delete".

This task is resource critical

With this option, you can mark a task as ressource critical.

In the ibaDatCoordinator settings, you can then limit the number of resource-critical tasks to be processed simultaneously in order to prevent the system from freezing due to overload, see Settings – Processing.

Tasks with a high demand on resources include report or extract tasks that are processed in ibaAnalyzer with very extensive and complex analysis rules and/or high data volumes.

If you enable this option, the associated task will only be executed if, at the time of execution, the number of active tasks with high resource requirements does not exceed the set maximum.

Actions

Execute

Option	Symbol	Meaning
Disabled		The task is disabled and will not be executed.
Always		The task is always executed. If the execution fails, it will be retried in the next cycle.
On success		The current task is executed if the previous task has been executed successfully or the previous condition is TRUE.
On failure		The current task is executed if the previous task failed or the previous condition is FALSE.
On 1st failure*		The task is only executed if the previous task failed for the first time or if the result of a previous condition is FALSE for the first time.

* Option is only available if an active previous task is defined.

Notify

Specify in which cases a notification should be sent. You can specify the general settings for recipients and senders, as well as whether notifications should be sent for the job, in the job settings, see Configuring a job.

Task analysis file

For some tasks, you can select an analysis file for configuring the task. The following options are then available:

When you open an analysis file in ibaAnalyzer, ibaDatCoordinator creates a local copy of the PDO file with the suffix "_(ibaDatCoordinator)" in the file name:

Changes to the analysis file are initially saved in the local copy. As soon as you close the PDO file in ibaAnalyzer, ibaDatCoordinator detects whether changes have been made. A corresponding message appears.

To apply the changes to the server and the original file, click .

Note
	The file with the suffix "_(ibaDatCoordinator)" is a local copy that only serves to ensure access to the original file while you are working on the analysis file in ibaDatCoordinator. The copy is overwritten each time you make changes to the PDO file in ibaDatCoordinator.

Target and Subdirectories

When you configure a copy/move/delete task or create a file in a report, extract, update, or split task, you must define a target directory. To access a network drive, you can also enter the login details of a user with write permissions, if necessary.

In ibaDatCoordinator, there are several options for defining the storage of the processed files in detail, such as the organization of subdirectories.

None

The files are stored under the defined path (target directory).

Time-based

Additional subdirectories will be created at the defined path. The names of the subdirectories are created on the basis of the date or time (YYMMDD). Each subdirectory contains the files which were created in the specified time period.

If you want to save the files on a weekly basis, the system calendar (Windows) is consulted for determining the week. As the week number can be different depending on the country, more parameters have to be defined.

• First day of the week (e.g. Europe = Monday, USA = Sunday)

• Start time of the week (at which time the new week starts on the first day)

• The first week of the year (the first week around January 1st, the first whole week of the year or the week with the first four days of the year).

These settings should be adjusted in compliance with the regional rules to get a proper week counting.

Time stamp for the name of the directory

This setting determines how the directory name for storing the task result is formed. Choose from the options offered:

• ”Date created” from DAT file

• “Date modified” from DAT file

• Current system time

• "Start time" in DAT file To use the start time on the computer on which ibaDatCoordinator is running, ibaAnalyzer version 6.5.0 or later must be installed.

Use multiple levels of subdirectories

If you enable this option, all time classes are stored in cascading directories, beginning with the highest class, e.g. year – month – day – hour for hourly subdirectories or year – month – week for weekly subdirectories.

Use 4 numbers for the year

When enabled, the year in the folder name is formatted as YYYY; otherwise, it is two digits.

Subdirectories with several levels and a year with 4 numbers

Keep original structure

The files are stored under the defined path. The structure of the directory corresponds to the structure of the source directory the .dat files are stored in.

Use info field/expression

Select this option to use the contents of one or more info fields in a DAT file for naming subdirectories. This allows you to customize and dynamically design directory names and store them separately according to customer name, lot number, material designation, or other criteria.

Single info field:

• Enter the name of the info field in the input field and optionally specify the part to be used by entering the start index and length (number of characters). If you want to use the entire content of the info field, leave the start index and length set to 0.

• Optionally, choose whether to remove spaces at the end or all spaces from the string in the info field.

• For structured info fields, make sure to separate the string sections with a period when entering the info field name.

Instead of a single info field, you can also enter an expression with text functions from the expression builder.

You can find an example of how this is used in Example: Using info fields for directory/file names

Other documentation
	Further information on the expression builder can be found in the ibaAnalyzer documentation, Part 3 "Expression builder".

Cleanup strategy

You can define a cleanup strategy for all tasks that generate an output file, such as copying files, extracting to a file, and creating a report as a file. With every execution of the task, the cleanup conditions are checked and, if required, the oldest files in the target directory are deleted.

Note
	The cleanup strategy only takes DAT files into account. For cleaning up other file types, e.g. PDF, please configure a cleanup task.

Note
	In order to prevent overlapping cleanup actions, disable the task-specific cleanup strategies if you want to use the global cleanup (see chapter Settings).

None

If you choose this option, data are written into the target directory until there is no free disk space left.

Limit subdirectories

Maximum number of subdirectories to be created for this task. When the maximum is reached, the oldest folder will be removed first.

This is only relevant if a subdirectory structure has been selected.

Limit disk space usage

Size of the hard disk space in megabytes (MB) that should be available for the respective directory. When the limit is reached, the oldest target files are deleted or overwritten.

Minimal free disk space

Minimum amount of free hard disk space in megabytes (MB). If there is the risk that the limit is exceeded, the oldest target files are deleted or overwritten. Note that 1 GB is equal to 1024 MB.

Note
	The option Minimal free disk space may only be used once on a hard disk. If this option is used by multiple jobs or tasks, the cleanup functions will compete with each other and undesirable side effects may occur, such as deletion of the wrong data.

If you start ibaDatCoordinator for the first time, the storage space that is already occupied will be calculated. Whenever a file is written to the target directory, ibaDatCoordinator adds the size of the file to the value that has already been calculated. If the remaining free disk space falls below the limit, the oldest files will be deleted first.

Note
	Due to the way ibaDatCoordinator calculates the hard disk space, iba recommends defining the storage limit 10% under the desired hard disk capacity.

Output files

Overwrite existing files in target directory

When a file is written to the specified directory, the name of the DAT file is taken and a task-specific file extension is appended. If this name already exists in the target directory, an index is added to the file name.

The index will be incremented by one each following time. If this option is enabled, ibaDatCoordinator does not add an index, but overwrites the existing file.

Note

Duplicate or multiple files are created when a file-generating task (extract, copy/ move/delete, report) is re-executed when the job is repeated with the same source file. A job is repeated if one of its tasks could not be executed and the job therefore ends with an error. When the job is repeated, tasks that were already successfully executed during the previous run are also processed again. In consequence, extraction, copy or report would create files with the same data and name. When extracting to a database, use the Remove extraction duplicates option in the ibaAnalyzer extraction dialog if necessary to avoid redundant data.

Use infofield/expression for output file name

As with subdirectories, you can also use info fields and expressions to customize and dynamically generate the names of output files. For more information, see the description of the field Use infofield/expression for directory name (see above).

You can find an example of use here Example: Using info fields for directory/file names

Monitor ibaAnalyzer

These options are only available for tasks involving ibaAnalyzer, i.e., report, extract to file, extract to DB, publish to DB, condition, and split tasks.

Memory limit

When enabled, the memory used by ibaAnalyzer is monitored. If usage exceeds the set storage capacity, the task is canceled and the currently processed DAT file is marked as failed.

Time limit

When enabled, the processing time for this task is monitored. If the set duration is exceeded, the task is canceled and the currently processed DAT file is marked as failed.