A Cascade allows multiple Flow instances to be executed as a single logical unit. If there are dependencies between the Flows, they are executed in the correct order. Further, Cascades act like Ant builds or Unix make files - that is, a Cascade only executes Flows that have stale sinks (i.e., output data that is older than the input data). For more on this, see Skipping Flows.
Example 3.15. Creating a new Cascade
CascadeConnector connector = new CascadeConnector();
Cascade cascade = connector.connect( flowFirst, flowSecond, flowThird );
When passing Flows to the CascadeConnector, order is not important. The CascadeConnector automatically identifies the dependencies between the given Flows and creates a scheduler that starts each Flow as its data sources become available. If two or more Flow instances have no interdependencies, they are submitted together so that they can execute in parallel.
For more information, see the section on Topological Scheduling.
If an instance of
cascading.flow.FlowSkipStrategy is given to a
Cascade instance (via the
Cascade.setFlowSkipStrategy() method), it is
consulted for every Flow instance managed by that Cascade, and all skip
strategies on those Flow instances are ignored. For more information on
skip strategies, see Skipping Flows.