Workflow Soluiton

Whenever you click "Create Integration Library" in the Altiris Workflow Designer, you are presented with a series of naming decisions. If you're like me, I always want to know where those names are going to show up in the future.

This is NOT a list of best practices. I've purposely used simplistic names that could cause confusion in a production implementation.

The library name

In this example, I'm using a "generator" that can read data from a comma delimited file (.csv) and store them in an array of a custom data type. In Workflow Designer, click on "Create Integration Library". You will see the following prompt. I've chosen the library name "MyLibrary".

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After clicking OK, WF designer will create a folder with the chosen name.

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Decisions, decisions!

On the final page of the generator wizard, you will be presented with a list of naming decisions.

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• Namespace is a .NET concept to prevent naming collisions among all the .NET code used in a project. Think of it as a prefix for just your code. For example: "System.IO", "System.Windows.Forms", "Symantec.Code", and "Altiris.NS" are all namespaces.
• Type Name is used to identify the class that will be instantiated for each occurrence of your data (one instance per row in the CSV file). A variable array of this Type can be accessed by all downstream workflow components.
• Read Component Name is the actual name of the csv reading component that you will see in the Components explorer pane in Workflow Designer
• Write Component Name is the actual name of the writing component that you will see in the Components explorer pane in Workflow Designer
• Components Category is the parent folder that you will see in the Components picker pane in Workflow Designer

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Browsing the downstream data

After generating the csv reader component, you can pull it into your project. If you right-click on a downstream component (END in this example), you will notice that there is now an array of the specified custom data type available.

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Reflecting the dll

Just for fun, you can use .NET reflector to look inside your custom component's dll. Notice that the read component's full name is the namespace followed by the class name "Generated.MyLibrary.MyDynamicClassRead"

The component category is defined as an attribute of the assembly.

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