It can often be very useful for property values to be taken from dynamic data rather than simply taking the static values which are entered when the data flow is configured. Property sources make this possible in Data360 Analyze.
When configuring nodes you may notice that sometimes a property name will be shown with a drop-down field, rather than just displayed as a simple label — when you see this, it means that in addition to the option of entering a literal value in the property field, you are able to specify a different source from which to obtain the property value. For example, from the drop-down, you can choose either the standard source, in which case you would simply enter a value in the property field and this value is used by the node, or you can choose a different source from which to populate the property value, such as From Field.
Field source
When you choose the from Field version of a property, you are specifying that instead of using the value entered in the property field, the node should use the value (or values) read in from a named field on the input data to the node.
Using a literal property value
If you do not select the from field version of a property, you need to enter a literal value. For example, on a HTTP node, the following Url property value is a literal value:
http://finance.yahoo.com/rss/headline?s=yhoo
Using the from Field version of a property
For example, you can use a single HTTP node to pull information from a range of financial stocks by connecting the HTTP node to a Create Data node which provides a list of multiple URLs.
In thi case, the HTTP node uses the from Field version of the Url property and takes the URL information directly from the Create Data node. This avoids having to use multiple HTTP nodes to pull information from different URLs.