Uploading an Export¶
The export is the raw material for everything that follows. SLIM keeps your original file untouched.
What you can upload¶
Use the drag and drop zone on the Project Home Page to upload your selected Export file, or click the zone to browse for it. The panel is headed Upload Platform Export, and the zone itself names the formats it expects: Supports .zip, .tar.gz, .tgz, .7z, .isx - or click to browse.
Those are the types the browse dialog filters for, so if your Export file is in another format, simply zip or compress it and it becomes selectable. A plain .tar file is accepted as well, even though the on-screen list does not mention it.
The filter applies to browsing, not to dropping, and SLIM does not check the format of what you give it before storing it. So nothing stops you dragging a file of some other type onto the zone. What tells you it went wrong is the summary card that appears next: it reports a single file and shows no platform badge. Replace the file with a supported archive rather than pressing on.
The form takes one file. So if the work needs several exports, gather them into a single archive first: select them all in your file explorer application and create one compressed file of all of them. SLIM unpacks archives inside archives as it extracts, up to three levels deep, so a bundle of bundles is fine.
What happens when you upload¶
Uploading stores the file, and nothing more. SLIM does not begin work on its own.
The Project Home Page replaces the drag and drop zone with a summary card for the export, giving its name, how many files it holds and how large it is. If SLIM recognizes the platform the export came from, it adds a badge naming that platform. If no badge appears, nothing is wrong: it means the recognition rules did not match, which has no bearing on what the analysis can do with the file.
The summary is read from the archive without unpacking it, which works for .zip and .isx files. For a .tar.gz, .tgz or .7z file, the card may report a single file and show no badge until the export has been unpacked.
The next move is yours. Click Extract Assets to unpack the export into the /extracted folder in the Project Tree. Archives inside archives are unpacked as well, up to three levels deep, so a bundle of bundles does not need taking apart by hand first.
Extraction also does something less obvious that matters later. Some source platforms save their files in older text formats that the analysis Stages cannot read - BizTalk exports very often do - so extraction writes readable copies as it goes. Without this step those files would reach the analysis looking like nonsense, and the analysis would quietly be working from less than you gave it.
While extraction runs, the Activity Log streams its progress and a Stop button is available if you have second thoughts. The page keeps itself up to date and reloads when extraction finishes, so there is no need to refresh it. The Project Tree has its own Refresh icon for showing the newly extracted contents.
What you see at the end depends on the Migration Mode you chose:
In Step-by-Step, an Extraction complete panel appears with a Go to Export Analysis button, and nothing further happens until you press it.
In Automatic, SLIM starts the Export Analysis Stage itself and takes you to that Stage Page.
Your original file is preserved¶
The file you uploaded is kept in the /export folder in the Project Tree, and nothing in SLIM ever changes it. Extraction reads it and writes its output elsewhere; every Stage after that works from the extracted copy. The archive that lands in /export on the day you upload is the archive that will still be there at the end of the project.
You can download it whenever you need it. Hover over the right side of the file name in the Project Tree and a Download icon appears.
This matters more than it sounds. Everything SLIM produces - the analysis documents, the questions it raises, the generated assets - is an interpretation of that one file. If someone asks months later why a pipeline behaves as it does, or whether a retired behavior was ever in scope, the preserved export is the evidence of what the work was actually based on.
Note that the copies in /extracted are not identical to it. They have been unpacked, and some have been rewritten into a format the analysis can read. The record to produce for an audit is the one in /export.
Replacing an export¶
If you need to swap the Export file, click the Replace Export button instead, and select a different Export file in the Replace Export dialog.
The button sits on the Project Home Page next to Extract Assets, and remains available after extraction has run. Once a Project holds an export, replacing it is the only way to change it - the page does not offer a second upload alongside the first.
If you replace the Export file, you lose the work done on the old one. This is a destructive action, and the dialog says as much: This will delete the current export and all analysis results, then upload the new file. Anything currently running is stopped first. Replacing an export removes:
the uploaded archive and everything unpacked from it,
every analysis document produced so far, including the Export Analysis document and any Integration Analysis documents,
every generated asset, both the Functional Representation and the SnapLogic pipelines,
the Stage Log files, and
all Job states. Progress starts again from nothing, and because the integrations are discovered afresh from the new export, the list of them may not be the same.
Three things survive the replacement, because they are yours rather than SLIM’s:
your additional instructions, including the Global Prompt,
your Supporting Files, both design and reference documents, and
the Project itself: its name, Team, labels and Diagnostic Logging setting.
One thing to watch afterwards. Replacing an export returns Migration Mode to Automatic, and the Project Home Page offers no control to change it back. So if you had chosen Step-by-Step for the original upload, expect SLIM to carry on into Export Analysis by itself once you extract the replacement.
There is a way back, and it is worth knowing because it is not signposted: press Stop while extraction is running. Stopping a run returns the Project to step-by-step working, so when you press Extract Assets a second time the replacement is unpacked and then left alone.
Because so little survives a replacement, it is worth being certain the new file is the one you want before you upload it. Replacing twice costs you the analysis twice.