Purpose
Defines an in-memory table that is populated by a program as a target for records.Format
| /OUTBUFFER | [record_attribute …] |
where
| record_attribute | = |
{record_type } [field_delimiters] {record_numbering} {encoding_attribute} |
| record_type | = | {STREAM CRLF } {STLF } {STCR } {FIXED record_length [record_alignment] } {VARIABLE [LITTLEENDIAN] [record_alignment]} {FORTRANUNFORMATTED } |
| record_alignment | = | {ALIGNED2 } {ALIGNED4 } {UNALIGNED} |
| field_delimiters | = | FIELDSEPARATOR separator enclosedby_setting |
| enclosedby_setting | = | {ENCLOSEDBY leading_character [,trailing_character]} {NOTENCLOSED} |
| record _ numbering | = | RECORDNUMBER [START recnum_start] |
| encoding_attribute | ENCODING encoding_value | |
| encoding_value | SOURCEENCODING encoding_name |
Arguments
| record_length | The length in bytes associated with the following /OUTBUFFER target record type clause: FIXED. |
| separator |
A single byte or multibyte character string that separates adjacent fields in delimited text records. You can specify the character string in single-quoted or double-quoted format as outlined in Appendix B Constants. At runtime, field separators are treated as follows:
|
| leading_character | The character in the field-delimited text records that optionally precedes the data in each delimited field. |
| trailing_character | The character in the field-delimited text records that optionally follows the data in each delimited field. |
| recnum_start | The number assigned to the first record in the file, for record numbering. The minimum value is zero. The default is 1. |
| encoding_name | The encoding of the character data in the table of records in memory. See Connect ETL data types/Text data type in the Connect help for a list of the valid values. |
Location
This option may appear anywhere in the task definition.
Defaults
Field Separator
The default field separator for the output is the same as the single byte or multibyte field separator of the first input that is different than UNIXSORTDEFAULT. If all inputs have either a UNIX default separator or no separator, then the default output field separator is a space. If none of the inputs are delimited, the output is not delimited.
Encoding
Use the ENCODING option to describe the character encoding of your target buffer. The encoding will be used to generate stream record terminators as well as any field delimiters or enclosing characters specifed. An encoding of LOCALE will use the system’s character set.
When no encoding is specified, a target buffer will have the same encoding as the first source file or pipe, if present. Otherwise, the target encoding defaults to ASCII. If UTF-16 or UTF-32 is specified for a target procedure, the byte order will be determined by the byte order of the first source file or pipe. However, if the first source file or pipe is not a variation of UTF-16 or UTF-32, respectively, the byte order is assumed to be big-endian.
Notes
The /OUTBUFFER option provides the record format and record alignment specifications applicable to the in-memory table that serves as a Connect ETL target for records.
Field Separator
A field-delimited text record consists of consecutive fields, with adjacent fields separated by single byte or multibyteseparator characters. When you want the field separator to be different than the default, specify the output separator through the separator argument.
When the ENCLOSEDBY characters are different from input, a target reformat is required.
Record Type
For information on supported record types, see Appendix D Source and Target File Types and Records.
Record Numbering
When you want to add a record number to the in-memory tables, specify the RECORDNUMBER argument. To start the numbering at other than 1, provide START recnum_start.
If you do not specify a /REFORMAT option, Connect ETL will automatically add a record number to the beginning of each record. The number appears as a 10- digit, unsigned decimal number. When the records in the file are field-delimited text records, leading zeroes in the number do not appear and a field separator follows the number.
If you do provide a /REFORMAT, Connect ETL does not automatically add a record number. See /REFORMAT for details on how to add the record number to a reformatting.