Retail Insights
Retail Insights has a large number of legacy interfaces that do not follow the shared platform data formats. These interfaces
are populated with files named after their target database table with a file extension of .dat, such as W_PRODUCT_DS.dat. All files ending with a .dat extension are pipe-delimited files by default (using
the | symbol as the column separator) but can be changed using CTX file options. These files also have a
Unix line-ending character by default, although the line-ending character can be configured to be a different value, if needed.
These files may be created by a legacy Merchandising (RMS) extract process or may be produced through existing integrations
to an older version of RI or AI Foundation.
Table 8-2 Retail Insights Legacy File Formatting
| Datatype | Format | Example | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Number |
0.00 |
340911.10 |
Unformatted numbers with periods for decimal places. Commas or other symbols cannot be used within the numerical values. |
|
Character |
abc |
Item #4561 |
Any alphanumeric string will provided as-is, with the exception that it must NOT contain pipe characters or line-ending characters. |
|
Date |
YYYY-MM-DD;00:00:00 |
2020-05-09;00:00:00 |
Dates without timestamps must still use a timestamp format,
but they must be hard-coded to have a time of 00:00:00. Date fields (such as |
|
Timestamp |
YYYY-MM-DD;HH:MM:SS |
2020-05-09;09:35:19 |
Use full date-and-time formatting ONLY when a full timestamp is expected on the column. This is not commonly used and should be noted in the interface specifications, if supported. |
This file format is used when integrating with legacy solutions such as the Retail Merchandising System (RMS) through the Retail Data Extractor (RDE) on v19 or earlier versions.
Example data from the file W_RTL_PLAN1_PROD1_LC1_T1_FS.dat:
70|-1|13|-1|2019-05-04;00:00:00|RETAIL|0|1118.82|1|70~13~2019-05-04;00:00:00~0
70|-1|13|-1|2019-05-11;00:00:00|RETAIL|0|476.09|1|70~13~2019-05-11;00:00:00~0
70|-1|13|-1|2019-05-18;00:00:00|RETAIL|0|296.62|1|70~13~2019-05-18;00:00:00~0