Skip to main content

FileDirector removes indexing metadata when ODBC lookup returns no result

Symptoms​

Use case​

A document is processed via OCR to extract several data field values. Although metadata values can be used in a file name, it would not be practical or sensible to attempt to embed all data from a document into the name of the associated file. A sensible strategy is to save the full data into a database using a unique key; the file is named using the unique key; during the loading of a document an ODBC lookup is used to populate the full document data.

Example scenario​

  • Files with names in the format "_some other text.pdf" are loaded into FileDirector.
  • During load the filename is split on the "_" character and the first segment is populated into a metadata field for the document.
  • Also during the load operation an ODBC lookup uses to populate further fields on the document.
  • For some reason the is not [yet] available in the ODBC datasource.

In the above example the default behaviour for FileDirector is to populate the document fields with the results of the data lookup. If that lookup yields no result then NULL values for all fields are used, including the field.

Impact​

If the value is set to NULL then subsequent data lookups (e.g. scheduled update for all documents) will fail. Only manual intervention can be used to properly populate the data fields.

Cause​

The ODBC lookup returned no result; NULL data is populated into ALL metadata fields, including the reference column.

Resolution​

Prevent re-occurence​

Find the web.config file in the FileDirector Server program files directory; add in the following setting/key; recycle the FileDirector IIS application pool so that the new value is loaded.

\${NL} \${NL}

Fix existing records ​

Full article to follow. In brief you must create a CSV file which uses the FileDirector document GUID in the first column and provides other data fields. Use a scheduled task to load the CSV file and reindex existing documents.