Distinct results while saving/validating pipeline vs executing pipeline

[darshthakkar]

Hi Team,

Lately, I observed distinct results getting generated during compile time (i.e. saving a pipeline) vs run time (i.e. executing a pipeline). Has anyone observed this behavior?

For instance, consider a simple example of reading a flat file, doing some transformations, using joins and exporting it as a csv/excel file. When we save the pipeline and the Snap Execution has been set to Validate & Execute, a flat file will be generated in Manager with default 50 records (this may be ranging from 1-2000 depending on each user’s preview count settings). The file generated during saving a pipeline is different than one generated after executing a pipeline.

What I observed was, the joins didn’t work during compile time whereas they worked during run time.

My use case doesn’t need to export a file but to update new records in Salesforce, what’s happening over here is that, during compile time, a vital field data is going blank and while running the pipeline, the data is going as is. The concern here is "As I'm considering brand new records ONLY ", compile time execution ingests wrong data and run time wouldn’t be able to ingest the correct data as the record was already ingested (new fields only, run time wouldn’t fetch that data as it’s no longer a new record)

Any help/thoughts on this would be highly appreciated.
Thanks!

Best Regards,
Darsh

[darshthakkar]

Tagging the experts to get some help on this one.

CC: @robin @koryknick @dmiller @bojanvelevski @ptaylor

[dmiller]

I defer to the developers on this one. I avoid Validate and Execute.

[ptaylor]

Sorry, I’m finding this a very confusing post.

darshthakkar:

What I observed was, the joins didn’t work during compile time whereas they worked during run time.

Is that related to the paragraph before it or the one after it? I’m not seeing anything else about joins.

darshthakkar:

during compile time, a vital field data is going blank and while running the pipeline, the data is going as is

What do you mean by “going blank”? What’s supplying that data?

darshthakkar:

The concern here is "As I'm considering brand new records ONLY ", compile time execution ingests wrong data and run time wouldn’t be able to ingest the correct data as the record was already ingested (new fields only, run time wouldn’t fetch that data as it’s no longer a new record)

We need more context to make sense of this. What’s a brand new record? From where? It sounds like you might want to change the snap that updates Salesforce to Execute only so that validation doesn’t perform updates that you only want to happen during execution.

Please use “validate” and “execute”, not “compile” and “run”. There’s nothing in SnapLogic that’s really equivalent to “compiling” so that’s a confusing term.

[darshthakkar]

Sincere apologies @ptaylor for the confusion. How I understand the 3 buttons on snapLogic is as below:

1. Validating a pipeline: Compile time
2. Executing a pipeline: Run time
3. Saving a pipeline with the last snap having snap execution as “Validate & Execute”: Compile time

I will not use Compile and Run time to avoid confusion henceforth. Let me explain again what the issue is and what I’m trying to achieve.

Upstream system: Snowflake
Downstream system: Salesforce

Issue: Data is different in output preview of a snap when the pipeline is saved or validated. I did a sanity test and the ID record (i.e. col A) that should have some data (i.e. in col H) is coming as “Null” values. This data that I’m expecting is coming from Joins though.

The above behavior is not the same when the pipeline is executed. With execution in place, the data comes as expected.

Definition of brand new records: With the help of Inner Join, I’m considering IDs from snowflake that are not in Salesforce and I’m ingesting those NEW records to Salesforce with this pipeline.

Salesforce Create and Salesforce Update doesn’t work efficiently (from what I’ve observed) so I’ve been using Salesforce Upsert for this operation.

The concerning piece is that, the last snap of my pipeline is a Salesforce Upsert with snap execution as “Validate & Execute”; whenever I make some minute changes and save my pipeline, those changes flow to downstream system (i.e. Salesforce) and that’s an expected behavior however with Saving/Validating pipeline, the data is NOT consistent for the joins (as explained before) and this inserts the records (if new record) or updates the record (if existing record) as we are using an Upsert.

When the pipeline is executed, the same record won’t be inserted as it’s no longer a NEW record and it won’t be updated too as that record hasn’t received any update from the upstream systems. This is basically the data snapLogic should have calculated during saving/validating pipeline but it wasn’t able to!

What I’m trying to achieve: Consistent data flow from Snowflake to Salesforce (with the help of Joins as those would be needed anyhow)

Happy to clarify further questions if any!

Solution: For now, I’ve already changed my Salesforce Upsert snap’s settings to “Execute ONLY” so that even when I save/validate my pipeline, those updates don’t flow downstream. I would have expected joins to work in all the different scenarios like save/validate/execute. Is this a limitation of the tool or am I doing something wrong over here? I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m missing a crucial step, I’m still learning snapLogic so by all means, feel free to give me right directions (I wouldn’t be offended).

Apologies again for the confusion and looking forward to your thoughts on this one.

Best Regards,
Darsh