Multi-Docs Explained

The YAML spec allows for multiple yaml documents to be concatenated in the same file with a separator:

---

This offers an additional convenience when configuring activities.

Multi-Docs Example

If you want to parameterize or tag some a set of operations with their own bindings, params, or tags, but alongside another set of uniquely configured statements, you need only put them in separate logical documents, separated by a triple-dash.

For example:

# stdout-test.yaml
bindings:
 docval: WeightedStrings('doc1.1:1;doc1.2:2;')
statements:
 - "doc1.form1 {docval}\n"
 - "doc1.form2 {docval}\n"
---
bindings:
 numname: NumberNameToString()
statements:
 - "doc2.number {numname}\n"

[test]$ ./nb5 run driver=stdout workload=stdout-test cycles=10
doc1.form1 doc1.1
doc1.form2 doc1.2
doc2.number two
doc1.form1 doc1.2
doc1.form2 doc1.1
doc2.number five
doc1.form1 doc1.2
doc1.form2 doc1.2
doc2.number eight
doc1.form1 doc1.1

This shows that you can use the power of blocks and tags together at one level and also allow op templates to be broken apart into a whole other level of partitioning if desired.

WARNING: The multi-doc support is there as a ripcord when you need it. However, it is strongly advised that you keep your YAML workloads simple to start and only use features like the multi-doc when you absolutely need it. For this, blocks are generally a better choice. See examples in the standard workloads.