I have set the lookup stage conditions to 'continue' on lookup failure. These lookups are surrogate key lookup. It's defaulting to 0 for these values. Is there a way to default to a different value, let's say -1?
Not directly, but you can set the output column to nullable then check for null in a subsequent Transformer stage then set the value to whatever you want to.
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. - Confucius
if dealing with 'very' large volumes and few failed lookups you may find it more efficient to reject them and only transform the reject link, then funnel back. But generally, the above is the best way. Its more stages to reject but less actual work, as far as I can tell.