A failure is an event that prevents a component from processing data in the expected way. An anchor might fail if it searches for text that does not exist in the source document. A transformer or action might fail if its input is empty or has an inappropriate data type.

A failure can be a perfectly normal occurrence. For example, a source document might contain an optional date. A Parser contains a

Content

anchor that processes the date, if it exists. If the date does not exist in a particular source document, the

Content

anchor fails.

By configuring the transformation appropriately, you can control the result of a failure. In the above example, you might configure the Parser to ignore the missing data and continue processing.

The event log displays warnings about failures. In addition, you can configure a transformation to write a failure message in a user log.