IDS Forum

Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.

Posted By: FRANK J. COMPUTER
Date: Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 10:49 p.m.

In Response To: Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server. (Art Kagel)

SEE MY COMMENTS WITHIN ***

> Art wrote:
>
> Ahh yes, I should have remembered that one, it's bitten me often enough.
> Only Informix supports that trailing field separator and it's required for
> import too! Never understood why, historical I know, it's always been that
> way, but dumb. I have a very old spec on a standard for delimited data
> files, and NO ONE actually does it correctly, but nowhere in the spec is a
> trailing separator allowed. Of course, I may be one of only 10 people who
> still remember there ever was a standard.
> -------------------------
>
> 1. Didn't know a standard existed for import/export of data, other than
> CSV.
>

Yup, several actually, but even the CSV standard is not followed by any
software out there. The closest to come to compliance was a card-oriented
database in the early '90s that's long gone. Among other things everyone
misses is a requirement for all "text" type fields to be quoted with double
quotes. Most systems do not write the quotes when they create delimited or
CSV files, many also do not process them properly - including the quotes in
the parsed data instead of treating them as delimiters. Xcel and Open
Office Calc handle the import OK (except that they do not automatically
assign numeric attributes to fields that are not quoted), but don't quote
properly on output. <sigh>

*** card-oriented db like "Tracker"?.. So, has any industry attempt been made to create an import/export standard? ***

> 2. So how can I tell Informix to suppress the trailing delimiter?
>

You cannot, though it's not the engine, but the tools like dbaccess and
dbexport that are producing the export file. You have to strip out the
trailing delimiter as a post-process. Here's a sed script for that if it
helps:

sed 's/|$//' <infile >outfile

Another option would be to use Jonathan Leffler's sqlcmd package which can
produce a fairly compliant CSV file without the trailing delimiter.
However, I don't know if it will still work with and SE database.

*** Thanks for the sed script!.. It would be a good idea to add a "WITH NO TRAILING DELIMITER" directive to the dbaccess UNLOAD statement. ***

3. The SMALLINT value is in between other values, example:
> ABC|32766|10172012|
>

So you ultimately want the record to look like: ABS|32766|10172012

*** YES ***

Note that while I understand that this was a hand carved sample, 32766
isn't a valid SMALLINT, though it would be a valid INTEGER. ;-)

*** Even though I'm trying to load 32766 into an INTEGER column, why would 32766 be an invalid SMALLINT value if overflow does not occur until a value is >= 32768? ***

> 4. The SQLS import did not fail on the first line read.
>

Right, because it got confused by the trailing delimiter into thinking that
a new record had started with an record delimiter character embedded in the
second field. IIRC SQLS has you define the number of columns in the data
file and so, contrary to the standard which would require it to obey the
record delimiter and either ignore the extra column implied by the trailing
delimiter or declare an error condition, it assumed that once it had parsed
the Nth data filed a new record was starting even though it had not found a
record delimiter yet. That's the other major "bug" in most delimited file
processors.

*** Your explanation absolutely makes sense! ***

Messages In This Thread

• SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.
  FRANK J. COMPUTER -- Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 12:01 a.m.
  • Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.
    Art Kagel -- Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 12:55 a.m.
    • Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.
      FRANK J. COMPUTER -- Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 12:35 p.m.
      • Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.
        Art Kagel -- Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 12:42 p.m.
      • Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.
        Jack Parker -- Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 12:45 p.m.
        • Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.
          Art Kagel -- Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 12:51 p.m.
          • Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.
            Jack Parker -- Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 1:01 p.m.
          • Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.
            FRANK J. COMPUTER -- Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 2:10 p.m.
            • Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.
              Art Kagel -- Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 2:39 p.m.
              • Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.
                FRANK J. COMPUTER -- Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 10:49 p.m.
                • Re: SMALLINT equivalent in SQL Server.
                  Art Kagel -- Wednesday, 17 October 2012, at 11:36 p.m.

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