Populating properties by using the Column Populator tool

After adding a new column to a table schema, you can populate values for that new column by using the Database Column Populator or the service-enabled Column Populator command-line tools.

Note:

You can expose a Single Value property contained in the Storage Stream (BLOB) by adding a new column to the table. Columns can be added by using the Property Optimization tool or the Modify Schema wizard. New columns will contain values only for rows added or updated after that column was added. Use the Column Populator or the service-enabled Column Populator to copy the value for each existing row from the Storage Stream into the new column.

A single database table may contain rows from two or more concrete classes. The value in the pxObjClass database column identifies the row's class. When you run the Column Populator tool, you specify the classes to be populated. Rows on the database corresponding to instances of classes that are not specified as included are unaffected by this utility.

The column populator tool does the following actions:

  • Assembles a list of concrete classes to be processed.
  • Determines which database tables contain the rows that correspond to instances of these classes.
  • Performs an SQL Select statement immediately followed by an SQL Update statement for each row corresponding to those classes.

You can also use the Column Populator tool to rebuild database indexes, and to rebuild Index- instances defined by Declare Index rules that are related to the database table.