Blank "Timestamp" field shows *****

ady · Post by **ady** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 11:18 am

Hi,

I have a job where I get blank data from the source for a column with "Timestamp" datatype in a seq file. The source is from a server job.

When i view the data in parallel it shows blank columns but when I write the data in a seq file or a dataset.... The data shows as "*******"

Please help me solve this

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 11:27 am

Are you doing any type conversions for this particular column? Give us more info on your design.

ady · Post by **ady** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 11:41 am

No type conversion in the job. I am performing two joins on the data but no transformations and type conversions.

SEQ file Seqfile

> join1 > Join2 > Output Seq File
Seq File

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 11:56 am

You need to do type conversions. If the file was created by a server job, everything is a string. For Date fields you need to specify StringToDate(). Handle nulls before that.

ady · Post by **ady** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:14 pm

I do not use a parallel transformer in my jobs , I use a basic transformer in my parallel jobs too. Where can I specify type conversions

ady · Post by **ady** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 1:53 pm

When i specify a default value in the table definition , I dont get the **** anymore ... Cant I insert blank space in "Timestamp" field?

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 3:07 pm

Well then you need to use modify stage. Type conversions are needed in parallel jobs.

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:18 pm

Blank is not a valid timestamp, therefore you can not insert it in a timestamp field.

If you are writing to a text file, you can replace NULL with a Null Field Value, but blank is not the same as NULL; you might need to convert blank to NULL in an upstream stage.

If the text file is fixed width format, the Null Field Value must have the same number of characters as the Field Width. For example, for a timestamp with no fractional seconds, this means 19 characters. All blanks would be OK, so long as there were 19 of them.

ady · Post by **ady** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 8:32 am

@DSguru

So my job will look like

seq file > modify > ...rest of the job....>>>

Would that solve my problem?

DSguru2B · Post by **DSguru2B** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 9:02 am

First create a test job that reads your source, changes the datatypes using modify stage and then loads it back to a sequential file stage. If this works out then you can replace the target sequential file stage with the your "rest of the job".