When you modify a child object, you may cause a parent object to become invalid. For example, if you modify a mapping by changing a port datatype to an incompatible datatype, the session may become invalid.

A repository object can have a valid, invalid, or impacted state. The Repository Service assigns valid and invalid states when you save an object or when you validate an object. The Repository Service assigns an impacted state when it fetches a parent object of a child object modified in a way that may cause invalidation. The impacted state is an indeterminate state that is resolved when you validate or save an object.

When you modify repository objects, the Repository Service assigns one of three states to the modified object and dependent parent object.

The following table describes the object validation states:

The Repository Service marks dependent objects and shortcuts to parent objects in other folders with warnings to denote the impacted status. A question mark icon denotes impacted status in the Navigator. The Repository Service marks the most immediate parent object as impacted, but it does not mark all related objects as impacted. For example, if you modify a mapping, the Repository Service marks the session as impacted, but it does not mark the workflow as impacted.

The following figure shows invalid and impacted objects:

You can validate impacted sessions, or you can choose to ignore the warning and run the session. To ignore the warning, you must configure the Integration Service to run impacted sessions. At run time, the Integration Service validates the session and determines if the session is valid or invalid. The Integration Service will not run an impacted session if it detects that the session is invalid.