Field Names with Brackets
I am importing data from a system that kicks out a csv file with pre-defined column headings. Some of those headings include square brackets, such as photo-hyperlink[0]. I will be importing many of th...
Forum Discussion
Oana,
How stable is the naming convention and export routing from the other system?
If it is internal and the IT department is your friend, then the escape will serve you well. If this is coming from an external source and is subject to change you may want to consider building a normalization application to import your CSV and then have that write data to your business system.
I have got a client with many suppliers that send in data all formatted in horrible ways. They import the CSV data where formula fields massage each one to a normalized format. Then we move the data from QB App One to QB App Two.
The key here is when the suppliers make a change, we only have to update the formula fields in QB App One to make the normalization routine correct again. The older data in QB App Two is never disturbed by changes in the CSV or formula fields.
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Don Larson
Paasporter
Westlake OH
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How stable is the naming convention and export routing from the other system?
If it is internal and the IT department is your friend, then the escape will serve you well. If this is coming from an external source and is subject to change you may want to consider building a normalization application to import your CSV and then have that write data to your business system.
I have got a client with many suppliers that send in data all formatted in horrible ways. They import the CSV data where formula fields massage each one to a normalized format. Then we move the data from QB App One to QB App Two.
The key here is when the suppliers make a change, we only have to update the formula fields in QB App One to make the normalization routine correct again. The older data in QB App Two is never disturbed by changes in the CSV or formula fields.
------------------------------
Don Larson
Paasporter
Westlake OH
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Don,
Your approach is interesting. In our case, the system we are getting data from is an in-house mobile application that I know will not change naming conventions for the duration of this project, so I am comfortable with the workaround for the short term. The in-house application is being phased out though, so I like your idea of having a converter application in Quick Base that can be updated when the new version comes out. I have previously used a Python script to normalize our data but did not want to have to go through a separate program to get our data into Quick Base among other challenges. I had not considered having a separate app do the normalizing, and will definitely give that a try for our next project. It seems like a much cleaner way to make a lot of the data processing happen that the user never needs to see.
Thanks for the suggestion!
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Oana Toma
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Your approach is interesting. In our case, the system we are getting data from is an in-house mobile application that I know will not change naming conventions for the duration of this project, so I am comfortable with the workaround for the short term. The in-house application is being phased out though, so I like your idea of having a converter application in Quick Base that can be updated when the new version comes out. I have previously used a Python script to normalize our data but did not want to have to go through a separate program to get our data into Quick Base among other challenges. I had not considered having a separate app do the normalizing, and will definitely give that a try for our next project. It seems like a much cleaner way to make a lot of the data processing happen that the user never needs to see.
Thanks for the suggestion!
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Oana Toma
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