I recently became aware of the Sequence operators. I want to better understand the difference between the Gather function and the Sequence AND operator. The diagram below shows my current understanding of their use.
In essence, with Gather, one creates a unified data object that is processed as a single physical quantity. I give an example of calculating the magnitude of a complex number.
With AND, the receiving function, can process its multiple inputs as disjoint objects. The method of processing of each individual input may be unrelated to the processing of the other inputs.
Gather implies that it will combine several exchanges items coming from different sources into one exchange item
The main difference between your 2 representations is the following: A Functional chain is contextual. You may create other functional chains, that involves these functions and other functions, and that provides a different behaviour than the one provided by your AND chain. For example, your “And Chain” may be renamed “Display result in nominal mode” and then you may create another functional chain “Display result in degraded mode” that could provide a different behaviour where RF2A may process with only one of the 2 inputs. In your second representation, the gather function is always here. Whatever Functional Chain or Scenario you create, you will always go through the Gather function and RF2B will always take (X,Y) as input.
Stephane
