Buffer Lookups work by making a query for every record sent into a Buffer. If passing in 10 records, it will query the buffer database 10 times. It passes data record by record.
Select a buffer from the drop-down list which is outlined in a red square in the image below. If there is no buffer to select, create a new buffer by clicking on the plus icon that is highlighted in the below image.
For more information on how to Create a Buffer, click on the link below:
Lookup Types Options
There are three Lookup Types to choose from.
ID Lookup Type:
The ID Lookup Type will query the buffer based on the value in the unique identifier field that is populated in the Record Generator step (as shown below) and return the values for that record. If there is more than one record with the same value being searched for, it will return a random record with that value. It can only return one record.
Below is the ID Lookup Type in the Buffer Lookup step which is after the Record Generator step. The ID Path field is the name of the field in the dataset to search from. The ID Field path is the name of the field that is in the buffer to match a value from.
Query Lookup Type:
The Query Lookup Type is used to customize the data by using this lookup type by using the query builder. Select the field that is in the buffer and customize the query to the required output. It will return all the records that is based on the query.
For more information on how to query a buffer, click on the link below:
Cache lookup Type:
The Cache lookup Type will only query the buffer database once and store the results in memory. Only the first record from the dataset will be stored in the database. It performs the fastest since it stores only one record and returns all the values from the first record. It is not the most up-to-date data.
In the Key field, type the column that the buffer must perform lookup values for. The ID Path field is the path to the value on the record to look up additional data for that is in the buffer. Most of the time the Key Field and the ID Path are set to the same value.
To search for a specific record in the data set using a unique identifier such as an ID or phone number, use the ID lookup type .
To return more than one record, use the query lookup type.
To run a complex query for testing purposes, use the cache lookup type since it has a faster performance speed; this option will however only return the first record.