¶ Description
Merge multiple GEL files into a sorted table.
¶ Parameters
¶ Standard tab
Parameters:
- Columns to sort
¶ Advanced tab
Parameters:
- Use double buffering to speed up reading
- Allow NULL inputs
- Allow the last input file to contain more columns
- Check sort metadata
- Skip corrupted blocks
- Abort when encoutering a character in a numeric sort
- Add a column with file names
¶ About
The input pin of the the MergeSortInput Action is connected to a table that contains (many) .gel filenames. Typically, this input table will be computed using the fileListFromObsDate action.
ETL reads all the corresponding Gel files simultaneously to create a globally sorted table as output (This is more or less equivalent to the Append action but the Append action does not generate a sorted output table and takes as input tables rather than filenames).
There are some limitations: The different “Gel Files” that are merged together must:
- all have exactly the same meta-data.
- all be sorted in the same way as the globally sorted table that the MergeSortInput action creates as ouput (The sort in the output table is equal to the sort in the intput tables).
The MergeSortInput is:
- a faster alternative to the simple Sort action.
- about as fast as a simple Append Action: This means that the “sorting” is essentially performed “for free”. This is great!
- able to produce a sorted table of un-limited size.
