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supports.
For an explanation of all the options, see: "Database Input Data settings" on page178.
For a text file
Because text files have many different shapes and sizes, there are a lot of input data settings
for these files. You can add or remove characters in lines if it has a header you want to get rid
of, or strange characters at the beginning of your file, for example; you can set a line width if you
are still working with old line printer data; etc.
It is important that pages are defined properly. This can be done either by using a set number of
lines or using a text (for example, the character “P”), to detect on the page. Be aware that this is
not a Boundary setting; it detects each new page, not each new record.
For an explanation of all the options, see: "Text file Input Data settings" on page179.
For an XML file
XML is a special file format because these file types can have a theoretically unlimited number
of structure types. The input data has two simple options that basically determine at which node
level a new record is created. You can either select an element type, to create a new delimiter
every time that element is encountered, or choose to use the root node. If there is only one top-
level element, there will only be one record before the Boundaries are set.
Note
The DataMapper only extracts elements for which at least one value is defined in the file.
See also: "XML File Input Data settings" on page180.
Record boundaries
Boundaries are the division between records: they define where one record ends and the next
record begins. Using boundaries, you can organize the data the way you want.
You could use the exact same data source with different boundaries in order to extract different
information. If, for instance, a PDF file contains multiple invoices, each invoice could be a
record, or all invoices for one customer could go into a single record.
Keep in mind that when the data is merged with a template, each record generates output
(print, email, web page) for a single recipient.
To set a boundary, a specific trigger must be defined.
The trigger can be a natural delimiter between blocks of data, such as a row in a CSV file or a
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