Description

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.

A sample Fixed File Input transformation is located at :

...\samples\transformations\Fixed Input - fixed length reading .kt

This step has fewer overall options than the general Text File Input step, but it has a few advantages over it:

• NIO -- Native system calls for reading the file means faster performance, but it is limited to only local files currently. No VFS support.
• Parallel running -- If you configure this step to run in multiple copies or in clustered mode, and you enable parallel running, each copy will read a separate block of