DSXchange

Hi,

I have a fixed lenght file(without delimiter), I want to load it into a table/file after some transformation. Can anybody tel me if there is a way to import fixed lenght or should I convert the file manually to delimited one and use it. I checked it in sequential file stage, but it says it requires a delimiter

Regards,
Divya

The sequential file stage can read and write fixed width files with or without delimiters. Just specify record length of "fixed" type file and delete the delimiter property.

Thanks ArndW!!

I tried the settings you proposed, but I get the following error when I try to view the data.

<Sequential_File_0> Unable to initialize the importer.
<Sequential_File_0> "record_length=fixed" (no length given) and record field format is variable-length. The first variable-length field is "REC_TYPE".

"REC_TYPE" is my 1st field name.

Regards,
Divya

What data type is "REC_TYPE" - I would wager it is "VarChar" - which isn't a fixed length.

You should use the datatype "Char" for all the columns that you defined fixed length to read you file and the length of each column must refer to the exact length of the records.

I changed all fields to Char of specific length as per the file. But still I get the same error.

<Sequential_File_0> Unable to initialize the importer.
<Sequential_File_0> "record_length=fixed" (no length given) and record field format is variable-length. The first variable-length field is "REC_TYPE".

Regards,
Divya

Have you specified a length property for every field?

Yes.. I specified the length for all the fields.

Regards,
Divya

Go to the columns tab and right click the column properties go to edit row specify the field length for each column. you can give the start position. after setting the property run the job again

It works!! Thanks all for your timely help!!!

Now I have another issue
I have a file containing different row types. Each row type has different number of columns of fixed length.

Eg:
Header
AAA field1(4) field2(11) field3(6) field4(7) field5(14)
BBB field1(9) field2(1) field3(16) field4(6) field5(4) field6(10) field7(11) field8(6) field9(2) field10(14)
CCC field1(7) field2(23)
-----------------
-------------
Footer

I need to import this entire file and filter each row type to specific destination.

I first imported the entire row as one single field and then used different transformers to send it to different targets. I used string functions in each transformer depending on the target to get that row type separately. But this becomes very complex when there are hundreds of fields in a row type.

Is there any better way to do this??

Regards,
Divya

Isn't that what Complex Flat File stage is for ?

I havn't used complex flat file before. I tried using that with some online guidance, but its not working. I did not get much info on dsxchange also about the same. So I started exploring with sequential stage itself.

Regards,
Divya

Do you need data from all record formats or only selected ?

Selected ones..

Regards,
Divya

In that case, you can use sequential file with 'grep' as filter.