Set up temporal data

Access your agent.xml configuration file

Navigate to the directory where you saved your agent.xml file when installing your DataSync Agent.

Add the <temporal> directive

Open your agent.xml file in a text editing application. To use the default configurations for syncing temporal data (columns will be named psp_valid_from and psp_valid_to and the maximum psp_valid_to value will be 9999-01-01 01:01:01), add the <temporal/> self-closing tag anywhere within the <task> tag. An example of this agent.xml is shown below. Otherwise, to create custom configurations for your temporal database, see Step #3.

Example agent.xml for default temporal data configurations:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
<config>
    <agent>
        <share/>
        <subscribe>
            <task instances="4">
                <task_name>test_subscribe</task_name>
                <message_connection password="encrypted:vlOtU71yu8N/EFIJH85SSBtaIt7qEEfvqiqft9VZyYE=" queue="psp.out.replicator.test" use_basic_consume="true" user="admin">amqps://test.perspectium.net</message_connection>
                <instance_connection password="encrypted:vlOtU71yu8N/EFIJH85SSPN9aF0P5/YViVwPEVFcGW4=" user="admin">https://mycompany.service-now.com</instance_connection>
                <handler>com.perspectium.replicator.sql.SQLSubscriber</handler>
                <decryption_key>This is my decryption key for testing</decryption_key>
                <database_type>mysql</database_type>
                <database_server>localhost</database_server>
                <database_port>3306</database_port>
                <database_user>testuser</database_user>
                <database_password>testpassword</database_password>
                <database_parms>characterEncoding=UTF-8 & useSSL=false</database_parms>
                <database_column_max_size>251</database_column_max_size>
                <database>psp_repl</database>
                <temporal>
                    <columns>
                        <column column_type="93" column_size="32" type="from">psp_from</column>
                        <column column_type="93" column_size="32" type="to">psp_to</column>
                    </columns>
                    <max_datetime>2030-12-31 00:00:00</max_datetime>
                </temporal>
            </task>
        </subscribe>
        <max_reads_per_connect>4000</max_reads_per_connect>
        <polling_interval>5</polling_interval>
        <skip_message_set_processing/>
    </agent>
</config>

Create custom configurations (optional)

• To customize your temporal database table's maximum date & time stamp in the psp_valid_to column, add the directive shown below within the <temporal> tag, replacing the red text with any value you would like to assign for custom configuration.

<max_datetime>2030-12-31 00:00:00</max_datetime>

NOTE: If records already exist in your temporal database table and then the <maxdatetime> value is changed, any records that were previously timestamped in the psp_valid_to column will not be updated to reflect the newly entered <max_datetime> value.

• You can customize the column names for the psp_valid_from and psp_valid_to columns by modifying the values within the <column type="from"> and <column type="to"> directives, respectively.

• As of Fluorine Plus Patch 9 (version 4.8.9), you can choose to skip inserting duplicate entries by adding directive <skip_duplicates/> inside the <temporal> directive. With the <skip_duplicates/>, the Agent will check if the new record has the same updated (sys_updated_on) datetime as the latest record and if so, skip inserting that record into the table. In Fluorine Plus Patch 13 (version 4.8.13), you can add the attribute check_all_fields in the <skip_duplicates/> directive to check the fields values if the updated time is the same from the previous share. 

<skip_duplicates check_all_fields="true"/>

NOTE: This may affect the Agent’s performance as it checks with the database and does a comparison every time a message comes in.

Save your agent.xml file

Save the changes you made to your agent.xml file and close the file.

Confirm temporal data sharing

Log into the database that your DataSync Agent is sharing data to, and confirm that psp_valid_from and psp_valid_to timestamps are being created and that the psp_valid_to timestamp is updated whenever a change is made to the same record.

NOTE: By default, the primary keys for the subscribed table your database will be a composite key comprised of the sys_id value, from column value, and to column value.