Files that store information in records and fields are sometimes called flat files, because the information is arranged in a simple two-dimensional matrix, like a table.
Flat files are self-contained, and do not contain data fields from other files. They may contain information about the individual records, such as field names. Flat files can contain records of a single type or they may contain multiple record-types as you would find in a printed report. These include items such as header, footer, and page number records, in addition to records arranged in columns and rows.
Delimited files are another type of flat file. Special characters such as commas or tabs are used to separate the fields in each record.
Report files, sometimes called spool files or print image files, are another kind of flat file. Each line in a report represents a record. The different kinds of lines represent different record types, making a report file a multiple-record-type file.
Analyzer can read any kind of text file, report file or delimited data file. You can choose to ignore header and footer information, and use the detail records as data files. You can also add header information to the detail records when you create a table layout.
A flat file database can work with only one file at a time, and each file can contain only one table. Each record has the same layout, though records can have a fixed or variable length.
Although they are easy to use, flat files are not an efficient format for storing large quantities of data. Only a small percentage of data is stored in this format.