I have a text file that I'd like to import into a SQL 2005 table. The file is tab delimited, which is easy enough to import, but I'd like the final field broken into multiple fields as well. The final field is space delimited. I've had no luck at being able to get this done. Has anyone done this?
View 5 RepliesWe're having issues exporting a set of data from SQL to a fixed width flat text file by just doing a right click on the DB, then choosing Tasks > Export Data. You can not specify a row delimiter when you choose a Fixed Width format. The only way around this that we've found is to specificy char(13) and char(10) at the end of the SQL select statement. Without row delimiters you end up with 1 giant record rather than 20,000 regular sized records. Is there any other way around this that we're missing?
Using Ragged Right is not an option either since the record lengths will be inconsistent if the last field doesn't contain a consistent length to the data.
Thanks,
Mike
I have the misfortune of converting a DTS package to SSIS that loads a flat file that has a text fields that can contain embedded text delimiters ("), column delimiters (,) and even new lines (CR+LF i.e.,hex 0D 0A) in it. A sample line from the file is posted here, remember this is just one line though it shows as three lines, since the third field has embedded new line in it:
4,"Sam","EVP; MARKETING PRODUCT MANAGER ""Level I"",
Internet Sales / HELP
8005551212",100
If you open in excel it handles it perfectly showing four fields, as below, and this is what I want ( I cannot get it aligned right in the posting, just save the above line in *.csv and open to see what it should be):
4 Sam "EVP; MARKETING PRODUCT MANAGER ""Level I"", 100
Internet Sales / HELP
8005551212"
Now, SSIS errors on the embedded text delimiters and breaks into two or three lines based on which option I chose. I have tried few options based on postings in the forum:
a). Using undouble and undoubleout: Does not work when there are embedded column delimiters (,) in the text field
b). Modified undouble script posted by lvovg at http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1718225&SiteID=1. Handles the embedded column delimiters (,) perfectly, but the embedded new lines (CR+LF i.e.,hex 0D 0A) are breaking it.
Since, I am using the ragged right format to read from the file then use transform script on the line by lvovg, the line is already broken by the ragged right format at the embedded new lines, hence does not work.
Right now I am stuck. Can someone please help (anyone from MS) ? I am already baffled at the amount of coding required to convert a very basic ( and working ) flat file load DTS package to SSIS. I am willing to persist bit longer to convert this to SSIS, before I give up and stick with DTS and wait for a fix / workaround.
Thanks.
I have a text file which contains the data that has to be inserted into multiple tables.The columnames of table 1 form the H1 follwed by Details D1,D1,D1...
The column names of table two form the H2 followed by details D2,D2,D2 so on and similarly for Table 3.
Am using a link server to the file directory and schema.ini which defines the column names fofr the text file
Is there any way of defining column names for more than one table through the schema.ini? or is there any other way through I can parse the text file contents to multiple tables?
Sample text file:
H1,JobDate,JobNumber,FileName,
D1,13/02/2008,asdf123,text1.txt
D1,13/02/2008,asdf123,text2.txt
D1,13/02/2008,asdf123,text3.txt
H2,PagesUsed,PagesPrinted,Pages emailed
D2,10,10,9
D2,1000,100,99
D2,50,22,93
Schema.Ini - defined for the first table
[LogConfig.txt]
Format=CSVDelimited
CharacterSet=ANSI
ColNameHeaders=true
Col1=JobDateText Width 20
Col2=JobNumberText Width 20
Col3=FileName Text Width 100
Hoe do i define the column names for the second table. All these contents are in a single text file and need to be parsed only thru sql.
Any help/suggestions are welcome..
Thanks a lot for taking time to read this.
Hi everyone,
There is a small problem encountered while creating a package in sql
server 2005.
Actually i am using a flat file which has 820 rows and 2 columns which
are seperated by line feed(for ROW) and tab(for COLUMN).after
importing i found that ther are only 800 rows imported into the table.
Ather verifying the input file i found out that there are some null
values in the second column so there is no line feed for those
values.
Can anyone please help me how to give multiple delimiters for the same
input flat file.
W2k3 server, SQL 2005.
@@version = Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - 9.00.1399.06 (Intel X86)
Standard Edition on Windows NT 5.2
(Build 3790: Service Pack 1)
I'm trying to set up my first SSIS package to import a flat file to a
database table. The connection manager will not allow a text
qualifier.
My data is comma delimited, with doublequotes around each field. If I
enter " as the text qualifier, then I get the error "The preview sample
contains embedded text qualifiers ("). The flat file parser does not
support embedding text qualifiers in data. Parsing columns that
contain data with text qualifiers will fail at run time." The data in
Columns view shows as just one column rather than multiple columns.
If I leave the text qualifier as None, then the data in Columns view
shows as just one column again.
I've tried with more than one datafile, including a short sample file
that I set up manually. All files get the same error.
Has anyone else seen this problem?
Thanks much for any assistance!
I'm trying to parse out a line of data that is separated by the text "atc1.", "atc2." etc.
For example,
[atc1.123/atc2.456/atc3.789/atc4.xyz/]
If I only want the data after atc2., then I could search the string for "atc2." and collect all the characters afterwards. But how can I make sure to trim off all the data after "atc3." to make sure I'm only collecting "456" from the example above?
Hello,
I am kind of new to Sql Server 2005.
I figured out how to use the import data wizard to import a delimited text file.
But I need to find a way to import many delimited text files at once.
does anybody know if this can be done in Sql Server 2005? and how?
thanks in advance,
Hi,
I have a function which takes a string and a delimter. It then splits the string by the delimter and returns a table of resultant strings:
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[vs_SplitTags] (@sep char(1), @s varchar(512))
RETURNS table
AS
RETURN (
WITH Pieces(pn, start, stop) AS
(
SELECT 1, 1, CHARINDEX(@sep, @s)
UNION ALL
SELECT pn + 1, stop + 1, CHARINDEX(@sep, @s, stop + 1)
FROM Pieces
WHERE stop > 0
)
SELECT pn,
SUBSTRING(@s, start, CASE WHEN stop > 0 THEN stop-start ELSE 512 END) AS s
FROM Pieces
)
This works very well, other than instances of the delimter are, themselves, considered to be results. For example:
SELECT * FROM vs_SplitTags(' ', 'foo bar') AS result
returns:
pn s
1 foo
2 bar
which is exactly the result I would want.
However,
SELECT * FROM vs_SplitTags(' ', ' foo bar ') AS result -- There are spaces before 'foo' and after 'bar'
returns
pn s
1
2 foo
3 bar
4
And
SELECT * FROM vs_SplitTags(' ', 'foo bar') AS result -- There are two spaces between 'foo' and 'bar'
returns
pn s
1 foo
2
3
4 bar
I want the function to ignore whitespace altogether, be it a single space or multiple spaces. Other than to delimit the boundries between words, of course.
In other words, all three examples above should produce the same result:
pn s
1 foo
2 bar
How can I do this? Any thoughts much appreciated...
How to import multiple text files (residing in single folder) into SQL Server table? I know how to import single file but not sure how multiple files could be loaded? Pls. guide.
Thanks,
HShah
How can we get the result set as TESTING1,TESTING2 from below
DECLARE @MyString varchar(256) = '$I10~TESTING1$XYZ$I10~TESTING2$~'
Basically i need to get all the substrings which are in between $I10~ and $
SQLServer 7.0
Hi,
I have a small project on that involves importing a series of csv files held within an ftp directory into our Datawarehouse. Every day a series of csv files will be added to the directory. These will be named something like:
Audit1.csv,Audit2.csv etc.
I would like to automate this process as this can involve up to 400 files at a time. The proecedure would need to identify a valid file, import it into the database, delete the file and then move onto the next one.
Does anyone know of a way to achieve this? I was thinking along the lines of using a cursor and bcp but I'm not sure how to identify these files to the database i.e. how do i make it step through the directory and process the files?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Rob
In a DTS package I have a text file import object, a data pump, and a SQL object. The text file import object has been set up to splice a 500 character wide file into 20 columns. The data pump task does a copy column for all the columns into the appropriate table. What I need to do is have a way of changing the file name I specify in the text import object. I have 12 months worth of data in seperate files (DBF0199.TXT, DBF0299.TXT, DBF0399.TXT, etc..)
which all use the same format. Is there a way to change the text import objects file name inside the package using an active script task or something?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Todd
I'm trying to import a fixed field text file into SQL Server using DTS but everytime I go past 3640 characters, I am not able to add, delete or move column breaks after that. Is anyone else experiencing this problem and know of a work around. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Using SP2 on SQL Server 2000.
Is it possible to handle text files i MS SQL 2000 in which fields contains single quotations and also are terminated by a single quotation
Like this:
1,2,'John's',1,2
John's contain a single quotation
Or is possible to rewrite file using MS SQL to use double quotation
Like this;
1,2,"John's",1,2
Hope that someone can help me out here, and doing it using MS SQL
At the time, I'm handlig it using MySql, but I would prefer using MS SQL
Regards
Carsten H.
Hi All,
I'm having a problem in importing an Excel file into SQL server 2000.Here is the scenario with my data.
One of the column has got the mixed data which is putting null's in the SQL server table in some rows.I found in the MSFT Technet that it is a bug in SQL server 7.0/2000.The workaround for it ( according to MSFT ) is to get the data into text file and import into SQL server.
Now the question is , my data contains some currency fields and numeric fields in addition to the char and date fields. When I'm importing the table using DTS wizard , it is failing. I'm trying to use conversion functions like cdate and clng etc . Still the DTS is failing.
What I noticed is when I try to import into a table with data type varchar for all columns, it is working fine.But the data is of no use.
I would appreciate if any one can help me out in solving this problem.
Thanks,
Sammy.
Quick advice question. I import lots of text files -- many with 50 plus data columns. Few come with a table layout other than perhaps the first row having a set of column names.
When I go to pull them into SQL server the columns default to varchar 8000. Is anyone aware of a tool (as a part of SQL Server or otherwise) that can scan a column of data and recommend a data type and size.
Appreciate any recommendations.
Ray
All,
What will be the painless way to import large fixed field text file that has more than 260 columns in sql table using dts pkg?
Suggestions?
I have created a DTS that imports a text file to by data table. I geterrors when ever I run this since there are fields in the table thatare numeric. I understand that I need to create an activeX script toimport those fields. DOes anyone have any guidance?
View 1 Replies View RelatedDoes anyone know if it's possible to use the wizard or DTS Designer toaccept a source file with the following simplified format:<field1label>: <record1field1value><field2label>: <record1field2value>- - - - - - -<fieldNlabel>: <record1fieldNvalue><field1label>: <record2field1value><field2label>: <record2field2value>etc.i.e. each input record is delimited by {LF}{LF}, and each column by {LF}. Orwill it be necessary to write a Perl script (say) to convert it first into a..csv file?Thanks,Dave--************************************************** **********************Dave Stone e-mail: Join Bytes!Computing Services Telephone: +44 131-650-3314University of Edinburgh Internal ext: 503314Main Library, George Square FAX: 0131-650-3308Edinburgh EH8 9LJ************************************************** **********************
View 2 Replies View RelatedSomething I find myself wanting to do frequently is the traditional foreach loop looping through a directory of files and importing (which works great in SSIS) - Only I don't want to import data I have already imported.
In a previous job I used Perl for thing like this and the structure would be as follows:
For Each File:
1. Get filename and timestamp
2. Query db table with list of already imported filenames and timestamp. If Filename not in the table or is in table with older date return 1 to import or if file already imported return 0
3. Based on the result of step 2 either import or skip to next file.
Any recommendations how to do something similar in SSIS? I run stuck when I try to get the timestamp of the file and I also can't figure out how to do the conditional inside the foreach container... I am also open to other ideas on how to only import files I have not already imported.
Hi i'm new to DTS and need to be able to import a text file into a table each day.
The main problem I have is the file is datestamped so the name of the file changes each day.
Today it would be called file20070419.txt tomorrow it would be file20070420.txt. When I select a text file as a source I have to pick a valid file ??? how can I get round this ???
Hi,
I have a flatfile which is of the following format. I want to import this data into the sql server 2005 database.
The alphabets at the start of each line represents the type of record. The data are position specific.
XYZQ20214646001V0608
A1249220AUGPSEA D11I0000
BCA030552050000C1234567841234412000
CFO093441050000C0895632175223652000
D100C5D0AA00C5D366
D200C5D92E00C5DB9F
E002720AUGSEA 0NRT 008D00000001 00C5D0E600C5D348N0000000000000
0000000 00000000CA0000FO0000
F002622AUGNRT 0SEA 008F00000002 00C5D96A00C5DB81N0000000000000
0000000 00000000CA0000FO0000
for ex in Record A, the following are the values that are based on column length
1 - (col length is 1)
249 (col length is 3)
20AUG (col length is 5) etc..
P
SEA
D
1
110000
Hi allI am looking for examples of scripts that will help me doing these things:
- import a text file delimited with the character "*", representing a new month of data, for example data from march 2007
- create a new table with the structure of an existing one to import the data, for example Data_March_2007
- alter an existing totals table adding a new column for the new moth imported, adding a new colum for the month of March 2007.
Hello Everyone and thanks for your help in advance. I am having a problem importing a text file into SQL Server 2005 and can't figure out where the issue is. The file is in CSV format with the text delimiter field as a ". When attempting to import the field into a SQL Server 2005 table, the import fails due to numerous truncation errors. I have tried importing into an existing table, but have also tried importing and allowing the import to create the table. I receive the same failures in both cases. For whatever reason, when allowing the import to create the table, each column is created as a nvarchar(50) even thought the column sizes vary widely. Oddly enough, when importing into a SQL Server 2000 table with the correct layout, the file imports perfectly fine, thus verifying there is nothing wrong with the data source. It also creates the table with appropriate column sizes in SQL 2000. I'm really at a loss as to what is going on. Any assistance woul dbe greatly appreciated. Thanks.
View 4 Replies View RelatedThis is what I am going to do:
Everyday, there are users FTP the text files to a directory in the server. During the night, a job will be run to import these text files to a table.
First, the job need to read the file name, then open the file, read the first line and insert to the table until then end of the file. Then the second file will be read ... until no more file to be read.
I am using VB to read the file name and open the file, and my question is how to pass the file name to the second step which is in T-SQL?
Any experience to be shared in this area ?
Thanks,
Rachael
Quick Question!
If you have both invoice header lines and invoice detail lines in a comma delimited file, how can I get the data in the file to be imported into two different tables. I can produce a text file eg:
1,20,10/03/2002,39 High Street Any Town,,
2,20,Fluffy Slippers,2,Red,10.99
2,20,Pyjamas,3,Black,15.99
2,20,Trousers,1,Lilac,24.99
1,21,10/03/2002,11 Gibson Close,
2,21,Sandles,1,Black,12.99
2,21,Shoes,4,Blue,23.99
1,22,13/03/2002,45 Mill Street,
2,22,Womble Feet,4,White,16.99
2,22,Glass Slipper,1,Transparent,23.99
Lines with 1 in the first column should go in the InvoiceHeader table
Lines with 2 in the first column should go in the InvoiceDetails table.
I have tried with DTS but to no avial - ActiveX scrips in the Transform Data Task can only seem to access one data destination - it one table not two.
Any Ideas?
Julia
I have a fixed field text file I am trying to setup an import for SQL 2000. If I use Access 2000 the file reads fine, but if I use the SQL Import feature or DTS, SQL doesn't line up the records correctly, I tried all the combinations of row returns with no luck, but Access works just fine. ANy ideas?
View 1 Replies View Relateddear all,
I have a text file that contains data that i need to insert into sql server... the file size is about 800 MB .. and contains about 17,000,000 lines ..
some one told me that there is a way in sql server to import this data automatically by writting some scripts ...
the file looks like this
xxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
yyyy .. yyyyy "I Need only These fields (the Ys).. I don't care about the rest of the file"
yyyy .. yyyyy
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
any help is really appriciated
Hi,
Please can you help me,
I have created an database with 3 fields
Hi,
Please can you help me,
I have created an database with 3 indexed (not clustered) fields
key : bytes 100
error : integer
status : bytes 6
I would like to know how to import 3 million or more records quickly.
If I don't index the the fields, the operation takes 3 hours. With indexed fields it takes overnight. Therefore, how can i optomise the import operation from a .txt file.
Thanks and regards.
Hi,
I am using DTS to import data from text file to database tables in SQL server2005.
there is one big column thay I dont know what data type I should use to import it, I tried both nvarchar(MAX) and varchar(MAX).
but I am getting the following error:
for nvarchar(MAX) , getting the below error:
Error 0xc02020ed: Data Flow Task: Columns "Column 2" and "VendorDesc" cannot convert between unicode and non-unicode string data types.
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)
for varchar(MAX) , getting the below error:
Error 0xc02020a1: Data Flow Task: Data conversion failed. The data conversion for column "Column 2" returned status value 4 and status text "Text was truncated or one or more characters had no match in the target code page.".
(SQL Server Import and Export Wizard)
Could you please let me know what data type I can use to handle this column?
Thanks,
Gelareh
the text file format use the length of character to define the field
for example,
0001130130HAUT BAGES AVEROUS 03
9 chars <0001130130> is a field
1 char <H> is a field
20 chars <AUT BAGES AVEROUS 03> is a field
one record by one record store in text
no space, no symbol, no line break between each record
i must use the length of char to define it.
Please help me how to import into mssql