Defining Talend connectors in the BPM perspective

Deprecated

Any workflow includes a set of tasks (steps) that follow a certain order to complete the workflow. Usually, these tasks require either automatic or human intervention with master data.

A Talend connector must be attached to one or more of the defined tasks in order to establish connectivity between the workflow and master data. Then the steps for adding Talend connectors to tasks that require automatic intervention are the same as for those that require human intervention.

Talend MDM connectors that you can use to retrieve master records from the MDM server include: TalendMDMProcedureSearch, TalendMDMViewSearch and TalendMDMXPathSearch. Talend MDM connectors that you can use to update master records include: TalendMDMContextConnector, TalendMDMConnector and sometimes JobLauncher.

The table below lists possible operations through the available Talend connectors:

Talend Connector	Description
Job Launcher	launches a Talend Job through a workflow.
Talend MDMContextConnector	creates or updates a record in Talend MDM.
Talend MDMConnector	updates master data records in a specific business entity.
Talend MDMProcedureSearch	launches a stored procedure that does a search on an entity and then retrieves the search results.
Talend MDMViewSearch	searches through an MDM View and retrieves the results.
Talend MDMXPathSearch	runs an xpath query and retrieves the results.

The section below gives an example about how to attach to a task the Talend MDMContextConnector that will establish the connection between the workflow and the master data record that needs to be updated.

Before you begin

You have already connected to the MDM server from Talend Studio. At least one workflow exists.

About this task

To attach a Talend connector to a task that requires automatic intervention, do the following:

Procedure

In the BPM perspective, open the workflow and then click the task to which you want to add connectors. The Submit New Price task is selected in this example.
In the Execution view in the lower part of the perspective, click the Connectors out tab to open the corresponding view.
Click Add to proceed to the next step: select a connector.
Select Talend MDM from the Categories list and then select the connector you want to attach to the selected task. In this case, we want to add a connector to update master data in the Product business entity.

Information noteNote: Four operations are possible through the available Talend MDM connectors: update master data records in a specific business entity, creates or updates a record in Talend MDM, search a stored procedure and search through an MDM view. The steps that follow differ according to the selected option.
Click Next to proceed to the next step: set the connector parameters.
In the Name field, enter a name for the new connector you want to add to the selected task.
If required, set a description in the Description field.

In the Select event area, select the option you want to use to initiate the connector.

Information noteNote: The available options represent various steps in the task life cycle when the defined connector can be initiated. With tasks that need human intervention, extra steps are available at which defined connectors can be initiated, namely: start, suspend and resume.

In the If connector fails... field, select the appropriate procedure in case of connection failure.
Click Next to proceed to the next step: set parameters to connect to the MDM server.
Select/enter the endpoint URL of the MDM server.
By default, the Connector uses the credentials of the current user running the workflow. Since this may prevent some automatic tasks from running correctly, for example if the current user does not have write access to an entity value, you can enter specific credentials to be used instead in the User and Password fields.

Information noteNote: You can click the Save button to save the current connector configuration in order to use it again.

Click Next to proceed to the next step.
You can select the Partial Update check box if more than one occurrence of the same attribute is defined in the business entity and you want the workflow to update only the new occurrences. If you select the Partial Update check box, select the Overwrite check box to replace the element if an element with the same key or position already exists, or leave the Overwrite check box unselected to add a new element instead.
If required, click the Save button to save the current connector configuration for repeated usage.
Click Finish to close the dialog box.
The new Talend connector configuration is added to the list of connectors in the Connectors view.

Did this page help you?

If you find any issues with this page or its content – a typo, a missing step, or a technical error – please let us know!

Leave your feedback here