Introduction to Rule Specifications > Inputs

Inputs

An input describes a column of data that a rule statement can analyze. You define an input in a rule set. The input can represent a column in a business data set. The input can also contain the data output from another rule set in the rule specification.

When you define an input, you specify the following properties:

•The data type of the data in the column.

You can specify the following data types for an input column:

- Date/Time
- Float
- Integer
- String

•The maximum number of characters that a value in the column can contain.

You do not specify any information about the business data source, such as the name of a column, table, or database. The developer who configures the mapplet connects the inputs to the business data. You advise the developer about the columns to connect. The developer can connect an input to any column that has the same data type and the same character limit.

Note: You can specify an integer data type for numbers in the range -2147483648 through 2147483647. To read numbers that are outside the integer range, specify the float data type on the input.