Using Attachments in the Basic Insight App

Attachments can also be accessed using the standard data access functions of Mosel using the appropriate mminsight procedures, thus providing another way for a user to interact with the underlying model. One advantage of attachments over model resources (such as the folio.dat file configured in the example project) is that attachments can be updated by Xpress Insight, whereas model resources are not changeable once an app has been created.

Other powerful use-cases for attachments (and, by implication, differences between attachments and model_resources files) include:

• They can be written to at runtime and served dynamically via the JavaScript API.
• Attachments can be easily switched or removed by users.
• They are supported by a range of included editors.
• Attachments can be associated with tags, allowing users to control what data is processed without changing the underlying model.

Note Certain potentially insecure file extensions cannot be used as attachments. If you have FICO® Xpress Insight Server hosted on-premise then you can configure this setting to select which are allowed, however the DMP version of Xpress Insight Server prevents use of the following extension types: apk, asp, aspx, bat, bin, c, cc, class, conf, cpp, css, dll, exe, gif, iso, java, js, jse, jsp, lib, php, phps, phtml, properties, ps1, rar, rpm, sh, swf, tar, tga, tiff, vb, vbe, vbs, vbscript, war, xlm, xlsm, xltm, xsdt. The Xpress Insight Server will block any import or upload of a Repository, App, Folder, or Scenario that contains one or more attachments with blocklisted filename extensions. For more on configuring the extension blocklist, see the chapter on Securing FICO Xpress Insight in the FICO Xpress Insight Installation Guide.

You can add an attachment for a single scenario or for an entire app, but uploading the files works in the same way. You can upload up to 250 files per scenario, and each file can be up to 300 MB. For larger uploads, use the insightcmd tool. For more, see Using the insightcmd Command Line Tool on the FICO website.

In the following sections, an attachment is built-in to the app while developing it, and then it is changed at runtime in Xpress Insight, to demonstrate the two way interaction with the underlying model.