Managing of flow calculations order

From XiP-en

Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Start/End Priorities 2 Flow control edge 3 Partial Run

Introduction

The XiP application enables for the user much more than creating and calculating own models. Sometimes the user wants to have an impact on order of calculating of components, especially when there are two (or more) not connected flows in the canvas and one of the models needs output data of the other one to be calculated correctly. Similar situation appears when there is Separate Flow component in the flow. This section shows how to influence on order of components calculation.

Start/End Priorities

Lets consider model below. Most interesting is the Separate Flow component providing one input and two outputs. By default there is no sure which branch will be calculated at the beginning, but sometimes it has influence on final result of calculations.

To define order of calculating of components the user can change Start priority parameter. To do this, please:

1. select one of output edges of the Separate Flow component
2. click editor button of Start Priority parameter in the Parameters frame.
3. in the appeared Edge Start Priority dialog, please define order of flow.

All above steps showing image below

To ensure that right part of flow will be calculated at the beginning (the CSML model will be displayed before the circle layout will be applied) the Edge 1 should be selected in the Edge Priority Start dialog and move in the top of the edges list (as presented on image below)

Please note that start priority of the Edge 1 (connecting Separate flow and Display on CSML viewer components) was set to 2 and start priority of the Edge 2(connecting Separate flow and CSML layout components) was set to 1 (images below)

Below image shows calculations order of the model.

Flow control edge

The flow control edge is useful for managing of logically separated flows existing in one canvas. To create flow control edge please choose the corresponding item in main menu bar as below image showing.

Below images showing one use case of flow control edge.

Both images containing the same set of components (two separate flows) , the only difference is that in the right image output component is connecting with Input CSML component with the use of flow control edge, the difference causes that calculation order is changed. In the first model (left image) both input components are calculated in parallel while in the second model (right image) components are calculated one-by-one (as the image showing).

Partial Run

The Partial Run enables for the user to perform calculations of flow which starts from selected by user component. Lets consider model below:

Whether calculations are started using standard Run both flows are calculating in parallel. Suppose that the user wants to perform calculations of only one flow (e.g. one showing the ARF_stabilization_30.csml model), to do this the Partial Run can be used.

The Partial Run causes that only flow which starts from the selected component will be calculated.