Alterian Sort Rows
- Ben Clark
Overview
When Kettle is used locally it is possible to manipulate multiple rows from a single invoke call allowing sorting on the values in each row. Previously Alterian CX would not support his functionality. Alterian CX worked on a Row by Row based that did not allow comparison between rows and therefore sorting. This limitation has been removed and with the Alterian Sort Rows step you can gather togather rows and sort across them.
Locally any field can be used as the Grouping field. When the step is used within Alterian CX we only support our standard Sequence Number. Please always use this as the Grouping field if you intend to use this step within Alterian CX.
This process makes it very easy to select the “best” option from a series of rows, highest value, lowest cost, top five offers for an offer carousel etc.
Within the plugin:
The following settings can be configured:
Setting | Description |
|---|---|
Step Name | Allows you to name the step to differenciate it from others with the same default name. |
Grouping Field | This is the field that will be used to “Group” the rows before comparison and sorting. If the Step is used within Alteiran CX this MUST be the Sequence Number. |
Output field name | Name of the Output field |
Fieldname | Name of the field on the stream to sort on. |
Ascending | Specify Y to sort in ascending order. Specify N to sort in descending order |
Case Sensitive Compare | Specify Y to sort by case usage. Specify N to ignore case. |
Sort based on current locale? | Specify Y to sort based on the system's current locale. Specify N to sort based on a standard UTF-8. |
Commonly used other Steps
The Alterian Sort Rows step will often be used with the existing Kettle steps Row denormaliser and Row normaliser. These steps were previously not valid within Alterian CX, indeed because we did not have the ability to have multiple rows from a single invoke they would have had no purpose.
Now with our ability to support multiple rows from a single input these become useful and are now supported.
Row Normaliser
The Row Normaliser step converts the columns of an input stream into rows. You can use this step to normalize repeating groups of columns converting these into the multiple rows for sorting. This has a similar usage pattern to the JSON Decoder step that is very commonly used.
Row Denormaliser
The Row denormaliser step can be used to try to improve performance either by adding redundant copies of data values or by grouping data. You can also use this step to convert data types.
When used with the Sort and Normaliser this allows you to pull your sorted fields back into one field to pass back in the call.