Common Options to All Types

There are some options for parameters that are common to all the supported types. Some of the more obvious ones would be the Caption and Description attributes. The caption is used as the prompt for the parameter value when editing a step, whereas the description is used to provide the longer more detailed narrative about how the parameter is used when the information button is clicked on for the parameter while in the editor.

A parameter is normally configured to not be required when it is specified. This behavior can be explicitly defined by supplying the IsRequired attribute as either true or false as needed. When this is true, then when the job module is edited, the parameter will be shown as being required. If the value is not specified for a required parameter, then the job will not be able to be enabled or run until it is supplied.

Parameters can be used for sending values into a module, as well as a way for a module to emit a value upon completion. The emitted value can then be used in modules in other steps of a job. The way a parameter defines this behavior is by defining the value for its ModuleParameterDirection attribute. Parameters that only define a value for input into the module would be set to In, where a parameter that only emits a value when the module completes execution is set to Out. There also can be times when you want to use a parameter of the same name as both an input and an output of the module. This can be done by specifying that the parameter is set to InOut.

The attribute named Default is also common to all types but does behave slightly differently for each because its value is always going to be a string value. This attribute does exactly what you might imagine in that it provides a default value for the parameter when creating a new entry unless the value is overridden when defining or editing the values in a job step. Because this value is always a single string, any parameter that is not a string type, must use a value that can be successfully parsed to the native type. Thus, if a default is specified as “abc” for a numeric type, then the default value will not work for that type. A successful default for a numeric type might look like “123”.

Additional parameters have effect based on the type chosen for the parameter. The supported types are a subset of the base .NET variable types.