Developer Workflow Guide

10.4.0
- 10.5.3
- 10.5.2
- 10.5
- 10.4.1

Back Next

Assign a Value with an Assignment Task

An Assignment task assigns a value to a user-defined workflow variable.

When you create a user-defined workflow variable, you enter an initial value. The Data Integration Service uses the initial value of the variable when the workflow starts. You can add an Assignment task to the workflow to assign another value to the variable. The Data Integration Service uses the assigned value for the variable during the remainder of the workflow.

For example, you create a counter variable and set the initial value to 0. In the Assignment task, you increment the variable by setting the variable to its current value plus 1.

When you add an Assignment task to a workflow, you select the user-defined variable whose value you want to change. Then, you write an expression to assign a value to the selected variable.

The following table lists the values that you can assign to a user-defined variable:

Value	Example
Literal value	For example, to assign the value 500 to a user-defined variable, enter the following value in the expression: 500
Workflow parameter	For example, to assign the value of a workflow parameter to a user-defined variable, enter the following value in the expression: $par:MyParameter
Workflow system or user-defined variable	For example, to assign the value of a workflow system or user-defined variable to another user-defined variable, enter the following value in the expression: $var:MyVariable
Any valid expression using the transformation language functions and operators	The expression must return a boolean, date, integer, or string value. Use a conversion function to convert a return value with another datatype to one of the supported datatypes. For example, to assign the value of an expression to a user-defined variable, enter the following value in the expression: LENGTH('test') If you use the equality operator (=) in the expression, the Data Integration Service checks whether both sides of the expression are equal and returns true or false. For example, the following expression assigns either true or false to the selected user-defined variable: $var.MyVariable = 7 + 5