Export job properties: General
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On the General tab, which is present when you have opened a new or existing export job in the Export job editor, you specify all properties of the current export job.
Click here for information on how to edit job properties in general. And click here to read about how to manage import and export jobs.
On the current tab you'll find the following settings:
Enter the name this job should have (the name of the file that holds these settings). This name must comply with your operating system’s requirements for file names (for DOS programs, a file name can only have a maximum length of 8 characters; Windows supports long file names). You don’t have to enter an extension: Designer will fill in .exp.
Enter a description of the export job, to clarify what it does.
This property contains the full path to the database table you want to export, without the name of the file. You don't have to fill in this property manually: just select a database in the next option, and the path to that folder is automatically entered here. Usually, you keep your databases in one folder, the \data subfolder of your Collections application folder.
First, enter or search for the name of the existing database table definition (an .inf file) that you wish to export. Do not enter the extension of the file. Examples of database table names are DOCUMENT, COPIES, and Collect.
If the database table that you select has datasets defined for it, these datasets will be listed in the Dataset drop-down list. (Some database tables, like the thesaurus, have no datasets.) If you only want to export a single dataset from the database table, you must select this dataset.
Enter or search for the path and name of the exchange file that this export job will create when you run it (this is the file that will contain the exported data). This must comply with your operating system’s requirements for file names. The exchange format of every Designer export job is (Adlib) Tagged; you cannot choose another format. The commonly used extension of such a file is .dat, but you can also enter another extension. (Designer does not automatically add an extension to your file name when it creates the exchange file, so you have to provide one yourself.)
Choose how often Designer should provide you with information about the progress of the export operation when you run this export job. With the value 10, this happens every 10 records. A larger value will speed up the export process somewhat.
Choose the record entry/modification date from which this export job may export the data from the selected dataset to the exchange file. This is the date on which a record was last modified. So all data from the selected dataset, entered or modified after this date, will be exported.
You can use this option to determine whether Designer should include links to linked records in the exchange file. From Designer 6.5, you can choose from: Export without links, Export with links, and Export full record.
If you select Export with links (or mark the Process links checkbox in Designer 6.1), on running the export job, Designer copies any linked data to the exchange file, meaning the tag of the linked field (in the primary database table) and its resolved contents: the field value copied from the linked record, and also merged tags defined for this linked field, and their contents. (If you process links during export it doesn't matter whether linked fields have forward reference tags or not.)
Choosing Export full record does the same as Export with links, but adds the forward reference tag and its content: the record number of the linked record that holds the field value for this field. This produces an exchange file which contains linked data as well as the forward references (besides all primary data of course). This option is used for certain advanced conversion tasks, for which some linked fields need some post-import processing in which additional information about those linked fields is required.
If you select Export without links, in the exchange file Designer inserts only a reference to linked data, meaning the forward reference tag and its content: the record number of the linked record that holds the field value for this field. For this to work, all linked fields in the records that you export, must have a forward reference tag. If this is not the case (when a linked field is linked on a term value), then the linked field without the forward reference tag will be treated as if you selected Export with links for it, thus exporting the tag of the linked field and the field value copied from the linked record.
Internal links (like broader and narrower terms in the thesaurus) are treated the same as external links.
In general it is recommended that you select Export with links, because if you don't and you re-import the exchange file later on, making the wrong settings in the import job may result in chaos in your database tables. Processing the links is just safer.