Flat File Support

Flat file support is accomplished by specification of initiator and terminator values for elements. This combined with the capability of having non-visible elements and elements that group other elements in a sequence or choice provides very powerful support for delimited documents.

Support for positional documents is a simply a special case of considering the total length of a field, and allowing the optional specification of an offset between fields.

A sample CSV file can be imported to create a delimited definition. Automatic handling for the issues associated with quoted strings in CSV files is provided.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of flat file support is that you can view a sample document and have the fields in the document be highlighted in real time as you are defining the structure elements. This allows you to very quickly define a structure for any flat file.


Here is a positional file with a column corresponding to an element shown highlighted.