You can import application data from a flat
file into the Designer.
The following examples, Node data on Arizona cities in a flat file
and Link data on traffic between Arizona cities
in a flat file, show the initial Arizona data files for nodes and
links respectively as loaded in Importing data from a flat file. (The data is
shown with spacing for readability.)
Node data on Arizona cities in a flat file
City Availability Throughput latitude longitude Population Flagstaff Online Busy 35D11'53N 111D39'02W 340000 Page Offline Unknown 36D84'00N 111D15'00W 30000 Tuba City Online Average 36D08'06N 111D14'21W 47600 Winslow Online Slow 35D01'27N 110D41'48W 90000 Sedona Online Slow 34D52'11N 111D45'37W 120000 Phoenix Online Busy 33D26'54N 112D04'24W 1200000 Tucson Online Busy 32D13'18N 110D55'33W 980000 Nogales Online Average 31D20'25N 110D56'01W 45000 Holbrook Online Average 34D54'08N 110D09'27W 16000 Show_Low Offline Busy 34D15'15N 110D01'45W 4000 Lake_Havasu Online Busy 34D29'02N 114D19'18W 20000 Taylor Online Slow 34D27'00N 110D06'00W 20000 Yuma Unknown Average 32D43'31N 114D37'25W 15000 Kingman Online Average 35D11'22N 114D03'08W 230000
Link data on traffic between Arizona
cities in a flat file
City1 City2 Traffic Kingman Phoenix 2.6 Lake Havasu Yuma 1 Kingman Lake Havasu 2 Kingman Flagstaff 3.4 Tuba City Page 0.9 Flagstaff Tuba City 2.1 Flagstaff Winslow 2.7 Flagstaff Taylor 2.9 Flagstaff Sedona 1.1 Flagstaff Phoenix 4.3 Flagstaff Tucson 4.5 Holbrook Taylor 1.9 Show Low Taylor 0.9 Taylor Phoenix 3.1 Phoenix Tucson 4.5 Tucson Nogales 0.1 Yuma Phoenix 1.1 Sedona Flagstaff 2.1 Phoenix Phoenix 4 Nogales Phoenix 3.7 Flagstaff Tucson 5
A flat file is a text file containing the same number of values on
each line. The values are separated by a separator character. The
separator characters supported by the Designer are comma,
semicolon, space, and tab. You can request automatic detection of
the separators. If a flat file contains values exported from Microsoft® Excel®
, it is sometimes referred to as a CSV (comma-separated values)
file.
In a flat file, the first line must contain
the names of the data properties and each subsequent line must
contain the property values for an object, with the properties in
the same order as on the first line.
Nodes and links must be loaded from separate
files.
You must define a mapping between the data
properties in the file and the properties proposed by the Designer
in the New Diagram Wizard. Some data properties may be unmapped and
therefore not used in the diagram.