3 Data Format

In each line of the files, the Data Import will process each line that ends with Carriage Return and Line Feed characters. Each line in those files represents one (1) row of data. Each row has fields at a fixed position and of a fixed length. You can use a comma as an alternative to separate the fields. In this case, the length of each field is variable and each text value is embedded in a double quote. The format of each row is described below:

Fixed length:

<UNIQUEID_COLUMN><TEXT_COLUMN_1><VALUE_COLUMN_2><DATE_COLUMN_3><COLUMN_n>CRLF

Separated value:

<UNIQUEID_COLUMN>,"<TEXT_COLUMN_1>",<VALUE_COLUMN_2>,<DATE_COLUMN_3><COLUMN_n>CRLF

Where:

<UNIQUEID_COLUMN> (Unique column identifier)

- Unique identifier assigned to each row, used to identify if the interface should make new or update an existing entry in the SPMS database.

<TEXT_COLUMN> (Any text column) 

- Text entry to be placed in the database. For semicolon separated files, text entries are embedded in double quote.

<VALUE/NUMBER_COLUMN> (Any value column)

- Value to be placed in the database. Any value format is acceptable. However, we highly recommend using a full stop as the decimal point separator. For example, 5.3

<DATE_COLUMN> (Any date column)

- Date/time to be placed in the database. We highly recommend ISO based date format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM For example, 2001-06-15 15:34. You can omit the time (Column separator for separated value format) A Comma is the default separator used between columns. The column separator can be of any character, including a semicolon and full stop.

CRLF (Carriage Return/Line Feed combination) - Characters ending each row in a file, represented by hexadecimal value 0A0D