Fixed File Input

This step is used to read data from a fixed-width text file, exclusively. In fixed-width files, the format is specified by column widths, padding, and alignment. Column widths are measured in units of characters. For example, the data in the file contains a first column that has exactly 12 characters, and the second column has exactly 10, the third has exactly 7, and so on. Each row contains one record of information; each record can contain multiple pieces of data (fields), each data field (column) has a specific number of characters. When the data does not use all the characters alloted to it, the data is padded with spaces (or other character). In addition, each data element may be left or right justified, which means that characters can be padded on either side.

The table below describes the options available for the Fixed File Input step:

Fixed File Options

Option	Description
Step name	Optionally, you can change the name of this step to fit your needs.
File name	Specify the CSV file from which to read.
Line feeds present?	Enable if the target file contains line feed characters; line width in bytes (excluding carriage returns) — defines the width of each line in the input file
NIO buffer size	The size of the read buffer — represents the number of bytes that is read at one time from disk
Lazy conversion	The lazy conversion algorithm will try to avoid unnecessary data type conversions and can result in a significant performance improvements if this is possible. The typical example that comes to mind is reading from a text file and writing back to a text file.
Header row present?	Enable if the target file contains a header row containing column names.
Running in parallel?	Enable if you will have multiple instances of this step running (step copies) and if you want each instance to read a separate part of the file.
File Encoding	Specify the encoding of the file being read.
Add file name to result	Adds the file name(s) read to the result of this transformation. A unique list is kept in memory so that it can be used in the next job entry in a job, for example in another transformation.
Fields Table	Contains an ordered list of fields to be read from the target file.
Preview	Click to preview the data coming from the target file.
Get Fields	Click to return a list of fields from the target file based on the current settings;for example, Delimiter, Enclosure, and so on. All fields identified will be added to the Fields Table.