Modules
The Flow Information Platform uses a “plugin” architecture. This means that when an update is available for one or more components (e.g. a Data Engine bug fix, a Flow Server enhancement, etc.) only that component needs to be imported as a module into your Flow system. Opening the Modules viewer enables you to import new Flow modules and remove old modules. Note that it is advisable to remove the old modules as they may contain large unnecessary files.
The Modules viewer highlights the various module types:
|
Core modules |
|
Data Source modules (i.e. where Flow can retrieve data from) |
|
Data Consumer modules (i.e. where Flow can send data to) |
|
Notification Service modules (i.e. where Flow can send messages to) |
Properties
The Flow Information Platform has a few system wide configuration properties. These can be viewed and edited by opening the Property viewer.
Note that the Time Zone property can only be set on creation of a new Flow Information Platform system.
Database Backup
This menu item provides a convenient way to perform a Flow Database backup. The backup file will be saved to the default SQL Server Backup folder on the server where the SQL Server is installed. Note that this will only perform a once-off backup. Recurring disaster recovery database backups are the responsibility of your System Administrator and need to be scheduled via SQL Server Management Studio (or other 3rd Party Tools).
Export & Import
These menu items allow you to export and/or import entire Flow models from one system to another. The difference between a backup and an export is that an export model only includes configuration and not all the data. This is very useful when you work on a Flow instance in your development/sandbox environment and want to import the model into your production environment.
Connect
This menu item allows you to easily switch between multiple Flow Information Platform systems.