Loading data from multi-column text files

The Across option (applicable to text files Data Reader protocols only) allows for the importing of data from a file with a multi-column structure: where the values to import into an InfoCube are structured across contiguous fields, each one relating to an occurrence of a dimension.

Consider, for example, the following file where the first column contains product codes, other columns contain the monthly sales values for January, February, March and so on. 

 

Product 01

730

950

1200

840

Product 02

1400

1650

2050

1925

Product 03

850

740

976

752

………

………

………

………

………

 

 

 

 

 

The numeric information contained in the file should be loaded into an InfoCube structured by two dimensions, Product and Month. The Product dimension is specified in the first column but the Month dimension is across columns. The Across option allows you to import such files.

 

To configure a Data Reader protocol for multi-column text files,

 

Important note:

The entity across cannot be a sparse entity for the InfoCube fed by the protocol.