Looking up data in different ways

You already know how to read, insert, update, and delete data from a database. You're ready to learn how to look up data. Let's call lookup as the act of searching information in a database. You can lookup a column of a single table or you can do more complex lookups. In this section, you will learn to perform both the simplest and the more complex kinds of lookups.

Doing simple lookups with the Database Value Lookup step

The Database Value Lookup step allows you to lookup values in a database table based on data you have in your main stream.

The following screenshot shows the Database Value Lookup configuration window, which looks very similar to the Stream lookup step you already know:

Database Value Lookup configuration window

In the upper section, you have the database connection and the table where you will look for data.

Then you have two grids:

• In the upper grid, you specify the keys to look up.
• In the lower grid, you put the name of the table columns you...