<database>.DBDelim

This file defines the column delimiters used to separate table columns in the data files. If there are no variable length columns, or the columns are separated by the default column delimiter (for example a comma) then this file can be left empty, but the file must exist even if it is empty in order for this to be considered a valid TDD.

Each line contains a comma separated list of values that define the delimiters for a given table:

<table_name>, <delimiter>, <quote> 

The values are as follows:

Entry	Description
<table_name>	The name of the table this delimiter applies to.
<delimiter>	The character to use as the delimiter for this table, expressed as an ASCII hex value. The most likely codes you will need to use are 2C (for a comma separated file), 3B (semi-colon separated) or 09 (for a tab separated file). For a full list of ASCII hex values, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII
<quote>	The character used as a quote character to enclose values that contain the delimiter. This can be any character except the delimiter, white space, or the row terminator character defined for this table. It must be expressed as an ASCII hex value. For example, 22 is the hex code for the double quote character. Be careful to ensure that the specified character is only used in your data to enclose values containing the delimiter. If there are any other instances of this character in your data, then this will result in an error. This is particularly important for tab separated data; if you are certain that your data values do not contain any tab characters, then you may wish to set the <quote> character to an unused ASCII character, such as 0.

For example:

Example: Comma Separated Values

This example sets the delimiter character for these tables to the comma (ASCII hex code 2C). If one of the column string values contains a comma, that value can be enclosed in double quotes (ASCII hex value 22).

Person,2C,22 
GENDER_CLASS,2C,22
CITY_CLASS,2C,22
CITY_CLASS1,2C,22
__SUPER_CHANNEL__,2C,22
FACTS,2C,22
CLASSIFICATIONS,2C,22
MEASURES,2C,22
DATABASE_LABEL,2C,22

The following example might be valid input data for one of these tables:

John Doe, 31 Hotham Street, Melbourne
"Smith, John", 29 Alexandra Street, Canberra 

Example: Tab Separated Values

This example sets the delimiter character for these tables to the tab (ASCII hex code 09).

In this case, the data is known not to contain any tab characters within the record values, so the delimiter has been set to ASCII code 0 (an unused character); this allows the data to include quote characters in data items.

Person,09,0 
GENDER_CLASS,09,0
CITY_CLASS,09,0
CITY_CLASS1,09,0
__SUPER_CHANNEL__,09,0
FACTS,09,0
CLASSIFICATIONS,09,0
MEASURES,09,0
DATABASE_LABEL,09,0

The following example might be valid input data for one of these tables:

John Doe    31 Hotham Street    Melbourne    Smith, John    29 Alexandra Street    Canberra 

In these examples, all the tables use the same delimiter and quote character, but it is also possible to have different delimiters and quote characters for different tables.