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A Meta-Update script is an ini file with Control and Assignment sections.

The flowchart represents a Control Section.

Control sections iterate assigning data to a Tag.

In each iteration, Output to an ARS or ServiceNow record or file may be done.

Other sections can be launched to query and/or output more records.

Control Sections specify Assignment Sections fired at various times.

Assignment Sections are used when:

Init	a section starts
Pre	the next Tag is loaded
Post	the output is done
Launch	the launches are done
Term	when the section ends

You set field values in Assignment Sections. You can also:

• load other data records
• set script variables
• fire server and client processes
• translate and look up values against internal lists, CSVs, Queries
• use regular expressions and arithmetic
• conditionally include other Assignment Sections

Iteration

A Control Section can run once, or iterate through:

• the rows of a Query, SQL Query, or File
• a Delimited String's entries
• the fields of a Tag
• the forms of a Join
• while an expression is true
• a Diary Field's entries

On each iteration, the next record is loaded into the Tag specified.

For SQL Queries and File records, interpretation and transformation masks are applied.

A Control Section does work. It can Query, Update.

Control Sections can Launch other sections.

Meta-Update is ideal when dealing with trees of data,

Q1 and Q2 iterate through Incidents — and within each Incident — WorkLogs. The script has access to all fields including attachments.

In this way, trees of dependent data can be handled a complete tree at a time.

A Control Section can:

• Update or Create an ARS or ServiceNow row
• Output a new CSV row or more text for a [ new ] file

For ARS, Merge can be used and workflow can be inhibited.

Updated records are reloaded so any server updates are available to your script.

The form being updated and the query for the update record may be references. ARS queries may use field database names.

If no changes are detected, the update is inhibited by default.