[kepler-dev] Output as "As Row" and "As Table" in EML200Data Actor

[Jing Tao]

Hi, everyone:

Currently, when user selected "As Row" as output type, the actor will show 
3 ports: first port is a string type - will send out a string token which 
is one row data separated by delmiter, second one is a string type too - 
will send out a string token which is the delimiter itself, the third one 
is integer type - will send out a integer token which is the number of columns. 

This approach works fine if the data file is simplied delimited. However, 
if data file is in complex text data format (e.g., fix width), it will 
cause some problems or make next step to need parse the data again. So I 
am thinking if we can use a ptolemy Record to output a row. If we used 
Record, there will be only one port in the actor(Maybe another port to 
indicate end of data), the port type will a RecordType, which is a array 
of data type based cloumn data types, and data is a vector which contains 
the entire row. Fox example:
Here is table:

Name   age
Smith  24
John   21

The Record type will be {string, integer} and row data will {"smith", 24}.


For output type - "As Table" has same issue: currently when we choose this 
output type, the actor will have 3 porst, the first one will send whole 
data(seperated by delimiter) in the table as string token, the second one 
will send the delimiter itself as a string token, the third one will send out the 
number of columns.

We already has another output type -"As ColumnBased Table Record" and it 
will send out whole table as column based arrays ptolemy Record. So I am 
thinking to remove "As Table" because it is kind of duplicated to "As ColumnBased 
Table Record". Another reseaon why I would like to remove "As Table" is 
because we need to put whole table into memory in this output type and 
this will cause problem when table is huge.

Any comments and suggestion will be appreicated.

Jing

 


---- -- 
Jing Tao
National Center for Ecological
Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
735 State St. Suite 204
Santa Barbara, CA 93101