An application is a deployable object that can contain data objects, mappings, workflows, and other objects. Deploy an application to a Data Integration Service to make the objects accessible to users that want to leverage the data outside of the Developer tool.

You can create a full application or an incremental application. A full application is an application that you must redeploy each time that you update the application. An incremental application is an application that you can update by deploying an application patch.

When you deploy an application to a Data Integration Service, the service runs the application and the objects that it contains.

If you do not want to deploy the application to a Data Integration Service, you can deploy an application to an archive file. You might deploy an application to an archive file for the following reasons:

To enable an administrator to check the application into version control.
To enable an administrator to import the application to a Model repository.
Your organization requires that administrators deploy applications to Data Integration Services.

You can update an application to update the objects in the application. To make the changes available to end users, you might deploy an application patch or redeploy the application depending on the application type.

If the application is an incremental application, you can deploy an application patch. A patch can update application objects while other application objects continue running, but the patch might require more time to execute compared to redeploying a full application.

If the application is a full application, you must redeploy the application for the changes to take effect. When you redeploy an application, you must choose to retain or discard application state information. State information refers to mapping properties, mapping outputs, and the properties of run-time objects. If the application is running, you must also stop the application. If you do not want to abort running objects, you can rename the application or deploy the application to a different service.