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What is an "FTP workflow" in this context. "File Transfer Protocol" doesn't make much sense to me here and I couldn't find anything that would. I'm also at a

What is an "FTP workflow" in this context. "File Transfer Protocol" doesn't make much sense to me here and I couldn't find anything that would. I'm also at a loss at "hollow dash" TBH.

biggerfisch 6y ago
It probably does actually mean "File Transfer Protocol". Its not uncommon (or wasn't at least) to find workflows that rely on data files of a specific format (to varying degrees) being FTP'd into the right server and then processed by that server. For example, I found this [1] randomly while googling. 1: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/order-management-sw/9.4.0?topic=ftp-receiver https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/order-management-sw/9.4.0?topic=...
barrkel 6y ago
"Workflow" is a term of art in business software that typically encodes into software what would have been the movement of paper around an office in the past. In an old paper office, documents would go into people's inboxes for decision making, and would be forwarded to someone else when done. Think of customer service taking a report from a customer (this is the inbox for Customer Support), turning that into an entry in an internal bug database (the inbox for a developer), and then into a code fix up for review (the inbox for a different developer), and so on. This is a workflow. Work literally flows from one person to another throughout the organization. Where integration between different software systems occurs, there's a spectrum of choices, from humans poking data into UIs through to direct API calls. One of the cheaper automated-yet-ad-hoc integrations is a script which FTPs files into well-known directories, often with semantically significant directory and file name conventions (e.g. dates or company codes). The receiving system polls the FTP location for new data (frequently CSV files), often using regexes or other techniques to extract metadata from filenames (since CSV doesn't really support non-repeating metadata). So FTP workflows is an ad-hoc workflow integration using FTP to connect two different software systems, replicating what would have been done by paper 20 years ago.
agumonkey 6y ago
> "hollow dash" That's because you never had to attend a uml profile meeting where people discuss the style of arrows. Think people trying to customize this https://i.stack.imgur.com/YCegU.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/YCegU.png with different line patterns for hours
- rjsw 6y ago
  You can discuss what colour they should be too.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    You don't think they avoided that topic
- weinzierl 6y ago
  Thanks for trying to answer it. I'm still confused why it should be a "hollow dash". I mean "hollow arrow" would make perfect sense, but dash? Maybe I'm overthinking it;-)

What is an "FTP workflow" in this context. "File Transfer Protocol" doesn't make much sense to me here and I couldn't find anything that would. I'm also at a loss at "hollow dash" TBH.

biggerfisch 6y ago

It probably does actually mean "File Transfer Protocol". Its not uncommon (or wasn't at least) to find workflows that rely on data files of a specific format (to varying degrees) being FTP'd into the right server and then processed by that server. For example, I found this [1] randomly while googling. 1: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/order-management-sw/9.4.0?topic=ftp-receiver https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/order-management-sw/9.4.0?topic=...

barrkel 6y ago

"Workflow" is a term of art in business software that typically encodes into software what would have been the movement of paper around an office in the past. In an old paper office, documents would go into people's inboxes for decision making, and would be forwarded to someone else when done. Think of customer service taking a report from a customer (this is the inbox for Customer Support), turning that into an entry in an internal bug database (the inbox for a developer), and then into a code fix up for review (the inbox for a different developer), and so on. This is a workflow. Work literally flows from one person to another throughout the organization. Where integration between different software systems occurs, there's a spectrum of choices, from humans poking data into UIs through to direct API calls. One of the cheaper automated-yet-ad-hoc integrations is a script which FTPs files into well-known directories, often with semantically significant directory and file name conventions (e.g. dates or company codes). The receiving system polls the FTP location for new data (frequently CSV files), often using regexes or other techniques to extract metadata from filenames (since CSV doesn't really support non-repeating metadata). So FTP workflows is an ad-hoc workflow integration using FTP to connect two different software systems, replicating what would have been done by paper 20 years ago.

agumonkey 6y ago

> "hollow dash" That's because you never had to attend a uml profile meeting where people discuss the style of arrows. Think people trying to customize this https://i.stack.imgur.com/YCegU.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/YCegU.png with different line patterns for hours

rjsw 6y ago
You can discuss what colour they should be too.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  You don't think they avoided that topic
weinzierl 6y ago
Thanks for trying to answer it. I'm still confused why it should be a "hollow dash". I mean "hollow arrow" would make perfect sense, but dash? Maybe I'm overthinking it;-)