How to Rehearse an Integration With the EDGEBIC Simulator
User Solutions TeamTo rehearse an integration in EDGEBIC by User Solutions, click Simulator in the Integration tab's header strip, then click Start Simulator in the drawer that opens along the bottom of the screen. EDGEBIC provisions a demo database and a CSV drop folder, creates a mask and an integration for each demo entity, and starts pushing fresh rows on an interval, so you can watch the entire mechanism work before it touches anything real.
Pointing an automated pipeline at live data is a leap of faith. The Simulator exists so you do not have to take it.
Before You Start
| Prerequisite | Why |
|---|---|
| You are connected to a demo or test database | The Simulator writes genuine records. This is the prerequisite, not a suggestion |
| Access to the Integration tab | The tab is permission-controlled |
| You understand the tear-down rule | Tear-down removes the demo source, not the data already imported |
| A few minutes to watch runs happen | The value is in observing real runs, not in the setup |
Step 1: Open the Simulator Drawer
Click Simulator in the header strip. A drawer opens along the bottom of the screen with its own heading and description line.
Step 2: Set the Options, or Leave Them Alone
Optionally set SQL Server. Leaving it empty lets EDGEBIC find a local instance by itself, which is what you want in most cases. Advanced reveals two more controls:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Push interval (s) | How often fresh demo rows are pushed to the sources |
| Seed rows / entity | How many rows each demo entity starts with |
A shorter push interval gives you runs to watch sooner. A larger seed makes the row counts in the history look more like a real feed.
Step 3: Start It
Click Start Simulator. EDGEBIC provisions the demo SQL database and the CSV drop folder, creates a mask and an integration for each demo entity, and begins pushing rows on the interval you set.
Step 4: Watch the Runs Happen
Two things are worth watching. The activity text beside the buttons narrates what the Simulator itself is doing. Underneath it, a row of Created: links appears, one per integration the Simulator built. Click one and it selects that integration in the left rail, so you can follow its runs on the Live Log and Run History tabs.
This is the part that earns the exercise. These are not mock rows in a preview pane. They are real runs, with real triggers, real counts and real durations, produced by the same machinery your production feeds will use.
Step 5: Stop, or Stop and Tear Down
Stop halts the pushing and keeps the demo data. Use it when you want the numbers to hold still while you read a run detail.
Stop and Tear Down removes the demo database, the CSV folder, and the simulator's own integrations and masks. It deliberately keeps the data already imported into EDGEBIC, exactly as a real sync would, because removing a source has never meant undoing an import.
How to Check It Worked
Open Run History for one of the created integrations. You should see rows with the trigger reading Simulator and sensible counts of created and updated records. Then look in your product or customer grids: records with the SIM prefix are the imported result, and their presence is the proof that the whole path worked end to end.
If the run history is empty, the mechanism did not run, and that is a genuine finding worth acting on before you configure anything real.
Common Mistakes
Running it against a live plant database. The records are real. The SIM prefix helps you find them, it does not stop a scheduling run planning against them.
Expecting Stop and Tear Down to clean up the imported records. It removes the source, not the data. Plan for that before you start, not after.
Reading the Simulator as a preview. It is not a dry run. Every row it imports is a row.
Stopping at a successful simulation. A working mechanism proves the plumbing, not your mapping. Your own file or query still needs its own first run and its own history check.
Next Steps
Once the mechanism is proven, build the real thing: how to create a watched-file integration for a file drop, or connecting EDGEBIC to your ERP database with a SQL source for a query. To drive and pause them afterward, see how to run an integration now and pause all schedules. For where the syncs should actually live, see why your ERP sync belongs on a server, not a workstation.
Every task in this library is indexed on the EDGEBIC how-to hub. To see an automated feed proved and then pointed at real data, book a walkthrough of EDGEBIC.
It is a demonstration harness that proves the whole integration mechanism without touching a real ERP. One click provisions a demo SQL database and a CSV drop folder, creates a mask and an integration for each demo entity, and starts pushing fresh rows on an interval. You watch genuine runs appear on the Live Log and Run History tabs, exactly as a real integration would produce them. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions it is how an administrator gains confidence in the mechanism before pointing it at production data.
Yes, and this is the single most important thing to know about it. The demo products, customers, work centers and orders are named with a SIM prefix so they are easy to spot, but they are genuine records in the database you are connected to. Stop and Tear Down removes the demo source, meaning the database, the folder, and the simulator's own masks and integrations, and deliberately keeps the data already imported, exactly as a real sync would. Use the Simulator on a demo or test database, not on a live plant.
Stop halts the pushing but keeps the demo data in place, which is what you want when you are partway through reading a run history and do not want the row counts moving underneath you. Stop and Tear Down removes the demo SQL database, the CSV drop folder, and the simulator's own integrations and masks. Neither one removes the records that were already imported into EDGEBIC, because tearing down the source is not the same as undoing an import.
Expert Q&A: Deep Dive
Q: We want to demo this to a buyer. Is running the Simulator on our real database a problem?
A: Yes, and it is worth being blunt about it. The Simulator writes genuine records. The SIM prefix makes them identifiable, but identifiable is not the same as harmless: they are real products, customers, work centers and orders that a scheduling run will happily plan against, and they will sit in your grids and reports until somebody removes them by hand. The correct setup is a demo or test database. Switch the datasource first, run the Simulator there, and the question of cleanup never arises. If you have already run it against production, the tear-down will not help you, because tear-down removes the source and not the imported data. You will be deleting SIM records manually, which is exactly the work the five minutes of switching databases would have saved.
Q: Our real integration keeps failing and we cannot tell whether it is our file or the mechanism. How does the Simulator help?
A: It splits the question in two, which is most of the diagnostic work. Start the Simulator on a test database and watch its integrations run. If they succeed, the mechanism, the host, the scheduling loop and the run history are all working, and your problem lives in your own source: the path, the query, the permissions, the column mapping, or the shape of the data. If the simulator's own integrations do not run either, the problem is upstream of anything you configured, and the questions worth asking are about the host and its permissions rather than your file. Proving the mechanism is a natural first move because it is cheap and it eliminates the larger half of the search space in one step.
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