Write Feature Types in a Specific Order

Question

How do I control the order in which feature types are written?
 

Answer

There are a number of ways to control the order features are written in.

Order the readers:
Provided there are no "blocker" transformers, the features will be written in the order they are read. This only applies to the reader level, not the feaure types. You don't have control over the order the individual feature types in a reader are read.

Order the writers:
The writer feature type order cannot be controlled, however, writer order can be controlled. This means that if you have two feature types in your workspace and you want one feature type written before another, you can add a writer for each feature type. The feature type belonging to the first writer in the Navigator pane will be written first, and the feature type belonging to the second writer will be written next.

Below: There are two MapInfo mid/mif writer in this workspace. BusStops will be written first, and BusRoutes second.




Hold-up features in the pipeline using FeatureHolder:
You can use the FeatureHolder transformer to holdback features. These features will be written last. In the example of parent / child tables in a database you might hold back the parent features with FeatureHolder, write the children and then write the parent table. Go here for a bit more on FeatureHolder. Sorter can also be used to order output at an individual feature level.