The vertical format reads source records stored as property name/value pairs.
Vertical format requires delimiters specifying how to identify each property name, property value, and record. These delimiters are defined in the General tab of the Record Adapter editor:
- Column: The delimiter between the name and value, typically an equal sign, comma, or tab.
- Row: The delimiter between adjacent name/value pairs. Typically the row delimiter is a new-line character (causing the format to appear vertical). The row delimiter defaults to a new-line character if omitted.
- Record: The delimiter between adjacent records. Typically it is the text REC or EOR. The record delimiter must be surrounded by Row delimiters in the source data (it identifies a special name/value pair that does not have the Column delimiter).
All name/value pairs leading up to a record delimiter are considered part of a single record. The properties for the records in a vertical file format can be of a variable number and type.
Properties are trimmed as they are read in. White space (such as the space, tab, and new-line characters) is removed from both ends of properties, but white space within a property is preserved.
- When picking delimiters, you should be aware of the content of the data. Using a delimiter that appears in the content of the data itself can cause problems.
- For the Vertical format, Forge has a built-in hard limit of 64K per record. While this setting cannot be configured, there are workarounds.
Vertical example
This Vertical format illustration uses the pipe character as the Column delimiter and 'REC' as the Record delimiter. The Property names (such as "WineID") are mapped to Endeca Properties. Note that the second record (WineID 347000) has seven properties while the first only has five:
You would define the record adapter for this Vertical format in Developer Studio as follows:
Tips For Using Vertical Format
- If a vertical file contains new-line delimiters, the delimiter must be specified exactly or unpredictable results may occur. For example, on UNIX systems, the new line is generally a "\n", while on Windows systems, the new line is a "\r\n" combination.
- In vertical format, the record delimiter must be surrounded by row delimiters (which are usually new lines).
- If a vertical file contains non-standard delimiters, the file may look different than expected. For example, if a vertical file has "~" as a row delimiter, instead of a new-line delimiter, the data for each record will be entirely on one line (unless new lines appear within the data itself). Because vertical files typically have one property per row, the file will appear to be corrupt. In fact, files in this format are valid.
