2021.2

About data
Data is what drives your business, and our software. We define data as anything that is
obtained through an Input task and used within the process itself. Once the data is obtained, it
becomes the job file that is passed from one task to another and generally used to generate
output (see "Job file" on the facing page).
Data can be manipulated using the tasks in the process, used as comparison for conditions and
loops, complemented with data from other sources, and used to generate your output. It
originates from many different sources (as many as the input tasks support), parts of it can be
stored in variables, and it is always accessible by the task that currently handles it.
Data is referred to in tasks using data selections; see "Data selections" on page54. Data
selections let you use data in file names, for example, or store them in a variable or in the Data
Repository for use later on.
While creating a process, you will need a sample data file to make data selections from it and to
debug the process with it. For more information about sample data files see "Sample Data" on
page71.
Note
Null characters present in the data may not be displayed properly when using the
PlanetPress Workflow Configuration tool, and they may also be printed differently by
different printers. To ensure consistency, you should consider filtering out such
characters.
About documents and variable data
"Variable data" is data that is meant to be merged with a document or template.
In PlanetPress Connect, variable data is usually retrieved from a data file (the job file) using
the OLConnect Execute Data Mapping task. This task uses a data mapping configuration file,
created with the DataMapper, to produce a record set. A data mapping configuration contains a
data model. Any Connect template constructed using the same data model can be merged with
the resulting record set by an OLConnect Create Content task.
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