Conventions for Operators

Overview

A collection of conventions for operators to ensure that there is a consistent style for operators within IBMStreams and that they are consistent with operators in the IBM InfoSphere Streams product.

This helps developers be more productive as operators have a consistent look and feel, for example, they don't have to refer to documentation to see if the delay parameter is in seconds or milliseconds, or what SPL type it is.

References

• Operator Granularity
• Operator Naming Conventions

Operator Names

• Name operators for the functionality they provide. There is no requirement to use Source or Sink in operators that have no input or output ports, for example SendEMail describes exactly what the operator does, whereas MailSink does not.

Documentation

• Document any operator and its parameters. As the developer you may understand what it does, other folks won't unless it's well documented. SPLDOC is the preferred mechanism.

Operator Parameters

• Parameters that represent time usually have units of seconds and have SPL type float64.