Connecting to TDD Data Sources - SuperCHANNEL

Space-Time Research's Textual Data Definition (TDD) standard allows you to create an SXV4 database based on data stored in text files, as an alternative to connecting to a relational database.

This can be useful in situations where data is not available in a database and so is extracted to TDD text files instead.

To connect to a directory of TDD files, use the sctextdriver that is supplied with SuperCHANNEL.

The sctextdriver supplied with SuperCHANNEL supports channelling Unicode characters. However, by default it uses the current system codepage. If you want to channel Unicode data, you need to uncomment the str.sctextdriver.encoding setting in the SuperCHANNEL config.txt configuration file.

1. In SuperCHANNEL, select File > Connect to Source. The Connect to Source Database dialog displays.

2. In the Driver field, select sctextdriver.

   

3. Click the ... button and browse to the directory containing the TDD files, then click OK.

   

   SuperCHANNEL populates the Location field automatically with the connection string for the TDD driver (as shown here, the connection string format is jdbc:sctextdriver:<full_path_to_directory>):

   

4. Click OK. SuperCHANNEL connects to the TDD and displays the database in the Source View:

   

For more information about using the TDD format, see Textual Data Definition Format - SuperCHANNEL.