The DataSink Plug-In

DataSinks are used to persist output objects on the target system (e.g., on a database or an LDAP directory). A DataSink provides one method to persist an output object: export. Nevertheless, it may internally be implemented using CRUD operations (create, update, delete). How an export is done is completely implementation-specific. The DataSink implementation may make its decision based on attributes of the result object, any control value or its configuration. The following table lists the predefined operations.

Operation	Description
create	Create the object if it does not exist, do nothing otherwise.
update	Update the object if it exists, do nothing otherwise.
delete	Delete the object if it exists, do nothing otherwise.
createOrUpdate	Create the update if it does not exist, otherwise update it.

Not all implementations provide all operations.

Next to the export method a flush method is required. The flush method is responsible to write out the data onto the storage. Depending on the backed technology a flush operation is needed to make the changes persistent (e.g., commit for databases).