The visible flow of the simulation as indicated by the box is straightforward in many projects. The box moves from one component to the next. However, the flow of a project simulation does not necessarily head in one direction. The flow of simulation heavily depends on the components used within the project.
There are forwarding components, which receive a number of records, apply the transformation to those records, and forward those records (such as the Data Calculator and the Character Mapper). The number of records processed in a single step is determined exclusively by the value of the Read Block Size property of the preceding component.
Other components do override the previous Read Block Size parameter. The Staging component is designed to work on the entire result set of the data stream (as defined with the Query of the Data Source component). The component does not process and forward any data records until the entire result set has been delivered to the IN-port. The Staging component resizes the number of records forwarded with the next step by using its own Read Block Size property. See Chapter 6, “Components” for an explanation of the behavior of every component during the simulation.
