#1163 docs: Document that multiple state messages can be output from a single target run Issue created by Jack-Burnett ### Singer SDK Version 0.10.0 ### Python Version 3.10 ### Bug scope Targets (data type handling, batching, SQL object generation, etc.) ### Operating System Linux ### Description My understanding was that a target would always emit a single state message when it had finished executing. This allows this standard way of running;

tap | target > state

However for long running targets (1 million records in my current case) it outputs multiple records. I was under the impression a target would only emit a single state message when it finishes, allowing that state file to be trivially used as the INPUT for the next run of the tap. It seems my approach would still work using;

tap | target | tail -n 1 > state

Maybe it isn't a bug and is intended; I'm not clear why it logs a variable amount of state messages really, so maybe it is just that the spec needs to be more clear on this (it's not that the target logs every state message, since the tap outputted 120 state messages. Looks like it just logs one every 30 minutes, as per the log; "One or more records have exceeded the max age of 30.0 minutes. Draining all sinks." ### Code No response meltano/sdk