All about Flat File Data or Text File Data in Informatica

Text file data can be in any of the two formats :

1.  Fixed Record Length or Fixed Width Files

2.  Variable Record Length or Delimited Files

Fixed Record Length or Fixed Width Files

In case of Fixed Record Length:

1.  Size of each field is fixed and values have to be for the entire size. If the value is smaller than the size then some filler character(s) are used like: Zero, Spaces, etc. For example:

            1   INDIA***********1000

            2   CANADA*********2000

2.  No field separator (like comma) is used and no text Qualifier (like Single or Double Quotes) is used.

3.  Data from such file are extracted based on the starting position of the Field and Size of the field. For example:

COLUMN_NAME	POSITION
EMP_ID	Starting position 1 and size 3
EMP_NAME	Starting position 4 and size 15
SALARY	Starting position 19 and size 4

Variable Record Length or Delimited Files

In case of Variable Record Length

1.  Size of the fields is variable and they depend upon the actual size of the value.

2.  Fields values are separated by a Delimiter (like Comma, Pipe Delimiter) and values are enclosed within Text qualifiers (like Single or Double Quotes). For example:

            "1"|" INDIA "|"1000"

            "2"|" CANADA "|"2000"

3.  Values are extracted based on the position of Delimiters (like Comma).

####Also read about "How to use Flat Files"