Map Databases

Robots may need to access databases through various database accessing steps (such as Store In Database). You must provide a reference to a named database for these steps. The named databases used by a robot must be accessible from RoboServers in order for the robot to be executed successfully on RoboServers.

While designing robots in Design Studio, it is convenient to use local databases that are not available from RoboServers. Rather than having to remember to change the named databases on the various database accessing steps before deploying a robot, Design Studio has an extra layer of abstraction to help overcome this problem: the database mapping. The mapping mechanism maps a named database in a database access step of a robot to a Design Studio database. As long as the robot is executed from within Design Studio, the named databases of the database accessing steps are mapped to the Design Studio databases specified by the mappings. The Design Studio user can use local databases while designing and testing robots without having to change the referenced named databases of the database accessing steps before deploying the robots.

Using database mappings also makes it easy for the Design Studio user to create the robot store values in a different database: it is a matter of reconfiguring the mapping to make it point to a different database.

A database mapping is a small configuration file defining which database to map to and whether Design Studio should display various warnings helping the user correctly configure the mapping and the referenced database. The name of the mapping is the file name of the configuration file. This means that if you create a mapping with the file name "objectdb," the database that the mapping points to will be accessible under the name "objectdb" in robots.

The following steps show several ways to create a database mapping in Design Studio.