Some Helpful Tips

These sections offer some helpful hints and tips that may make your task easier. Since every report or text file is different, these subjects are more general in nature. There are more specific examples offered in other sections of the documentation.

Finding Logical Record Breaks

Your goal is to extract useful data out of your report or text file and then assemble that data into a field-and-record-oriented format. Therefore, one of your initial steps should be to examine the report and find the logical record breaks. When you locate a logical record break, you define a line of text as the ACCEPT Record to mark where the Data Extractor should stop collecting data fields and assemble a data record.

Some types of reports are formatted in such a way that logical record breaks are easy to locate and the ACCEPT Record is easy to define. Some examples follow:

• Reports where each page contains the information that comprises one record, and the last line of text is defined as the ACCEPT Record. See Extract Schema Tutorial 1 - The Basics and Extract Schema Tutorial 2 - Tagged Data and Automatic Features.
• Columnar reports where each line of text comprises one record, and each line is defined as the ACCEPT Record. See Extract Schema Tutorial 3 - Columnar Data.
• Variable-length ASCII files where each record is derived from a consistent number of lines of text, and the last line of each record is defined as the ACCEPT Record. See Extract Schema Tutorial 4 - Floating Tags.

Other types of reports are not so easy. Some examples follow:

• Reports that contain detail lines and a footer with data to be extracted. See Extract Schema Tutorial 5 - Columnar Data with a Footer.
• Reports that contain data that extends across multiple lines of text within one data field. See Extract Schema Tutorial 6 - Variable Length Multi Line Data Fields.
• Reports that contain data that fits into more than on logical record type. See Extract Schema Tutorial 7 - Multiple Accept Records.

When your report is formatted in such a way that defining the end of a record is difficult, sometimes the only way to handle this is to define the beginning of a record. You can use the ACCEPT Record option that tells the Data Extractor to assemble a record, but collect the data fields Before Collecting this line’s fields. This ends the field collection action on the last defined line of text that falls BEFORE the ACCEPT Record line, and places any data fields on the ACCEPT Record line in the next record.

Basic Steps

These are the basic steps required for creating an Extract script.

1. Open a text file, report file, or URL file with the Data Extractor.
2. Define line styles for each line in source file that contains information to be extracted.
3. Within each defined line, you may define one or more data fields.
4. After defining all the needed line styles and data fields, save the script.
5. Export the extracted data.

The following sections explain the details of these procedures.

• How to Create a Report File
• Defining Line Styles
• Defining Data Fields
• Saving an Extract Script