EMIGALL File Conversion problem

[Former Member]

Hi Experts,

We are migrating data for an Arabic utility company.

The data transformation is being taken care of by the client. The file which they are producing is a tab delimited text file using the following approach:

1) Execute SQL scripts to fetch and transform data

2) Save the data in Text File (Tab delimited).

3) Open the file in Excel and sort the data to align the data as per EMIGALL record structure. This is being done in excel instead of SQL itself is because the client resource is unable to do the same sorting/aligning in SQL

4) Save the data a tab delimited text file and pass the file to us.

When we are copying this file onto SAP server (using FTP or manually through CG3Z transaction), the file formatting as required by EMIGALL is not preserved.

For Eg: The record 12345TABFIELD1TABFIELD2 becomes

1#2#3#4#5#F#I#E#L#D#1#F#I#E#L#D#2#

Directly uploading the file using EMIGALL is working fine, but the problem is that for small amount of data, it is ok but for actual migration this will not be possible.

I think that this loss of formatting is occuring in step 3, but in that case , file upload to EMIGALL should also fail.

Can someone please help me out with this issue and provide some suggestion as to how to approach further?

Thanks,

Ram

[Former Member]

Hi Ram,

Can you open the original file that the client sends to you in Notepad? And is it intact there?

I've had instances where weird things have been solved (not with Emigall, just in general) just by opening the text file in Notepad and saving it. Notepad tends to get rid of extra formatting and whatever junk wants to attach itself to the text from the originating software. Give it a try.

HTH,

CN

[Former Member]

Hi Ram

File copy

When you copy the file, are you using text or binary format?

Is the text in Roman - as shown in your example - or Arabic?

What codepage is the text you're transferring and is there a transformation into another codepage required?

Transformation

Where and how do you transform the text file into a binary file?

Cheers

Jürgen

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I checked what the "Upload local file" does. It changes the format from a text file to the required binary format.

Please have a look into the binary format in the User Handbook (Transaction EMIGALL, Menu Item "IS-U Migration: User Handbook"):

- IS-U Migration Workbench: User Handbook

- Sequential Import Files

- Physical Structure

- Various Record Types

Edited by: sattlerj on May 4, 2011 4:52 PM

[daniel_mccollum]

I have found similar conversion errors to be related to carriage returns, or other special chars enroaching on the field space assigned to an attribute. IE:

field 1, char 2, value = 'X'

In the file it is stored as 'X', & when converted is passed as 'X#'

If instead the value = 'X ' the special chars cannot be interpreted as part of field 1.

However your example is appears to be a codepage conversion issue.