Defining Delimited Data

From the File Format screen (Local or Windows Server), select the Delimited text radio button and click [Next].

Note: Analyzer supports reading both standard ASCII and Unicode delimited files.

The Wizard presents an initial view of the delimited data, letting you adjust the delimited file properties and parameters as necessary:

The Wizard also offers the option to read the data for a specified number of seconds or to read the entire delimited file to ensure maximum possible field lengths are determined. For large delimited data files with reasonable consistency, use the specified number of seconds to read the file as this will likely yield the correct maximum field lengths and will dramatically improve processing the data for definition purposes.

Note: You can always define the delimited data and then run the Verify command on all columns to see if any field length adjustments are subsequently needed. Analyzer allows the length of fields within delimited data files to be adjusted as needed.

Click [Next]. The Wizard proceeds to the Edit Field Properties panel. See Edit Field Properties.

Errors in Delimited Data

Whenever the Wizard detects inconsistencies in the delimited data (wrong data type, incorrect number of columns in a row), an error message is provided when you click [Next] on the Delimited File Properties panel. Additionally, a Warning dialog appears identifying errors. Errors can be ignored but may affect subsequent analysis.

Performance with Delimited Data

If your delimited data file is large and you intend to process the delimited file multiple times, performance can be dramatically improved by extracting just the fields of interest as the resulting flat file will be much faster to process.

Note: Do not extract records as this will make an exact copy of the delimited data and therefore not improve performance at all.