outputor

Outputor is a term used in software engineering to describe a class of components that manage the delivery of data from processing stages to external sinks. It focuses on the emission path, including routing, formatting, buffering, and reliable delivery to destinations such as files, databases, queues, dashboards, or APIs.

Core capabilities include configurable output channels, sink routing rules, format handling, backpressure management, deduplication, retries, and basic monitoring. Many implementations support pluggable connectors for common sinks and may apply simple preprocessing before delivery.

Architecturally, an outputor often consists of a routing engine, a set of sink adapters, and a delivery controller that enforces quality-of-service policies. It can run as a standalone service or as a module within a larger data-processing platform.

Common use cases include streaming data export, log shipping, event publishing, and exporting analytic results to BI tools or data warehouses.

The term is not universally standardized; in some contexts it is used interchangeably with sink manager or output adapter. Related concepts include data pipelines, ETL, and data routing.