Define an external data source - Intergraph Spoolgen - Help

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English
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Intergraph Spoolgen
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SmartPlant Foundation / SDx Version
10
I-Configure Version
6.0(2016)
Isogen Version
13.0(2016)
Smart Isometrics Version
7.0(2019)
Spoolgen Version
9.0(2019)

The Get External Data function supports a large range of external data sources by using the DSN (Data Source Name) and UDL (Universal Data Link) options. You can use any data source with an OLEDB or ODBC driver, which includes all commercially available database systems, from SQL Server and Oracle to MySQL and DB2. The basic requirement is that data is held in tables and can be accessed using SQL statements.

One of the most common data sources is an Excel spreadsheet. Because a spreadsheet is not a true database, there are special considerations when using Excel spreadsheets as a data source.

  • Data must be contiguous with no blank rows or columns.

  • There must be a single header row, containing field names.

  • Field names must be alpha numeric.

  • Each table must be given a user-defined name (for use in SQL statements).

  • If a column contains a mixture of numbers and strings, SQL statements can return unexpected values. This is because the first few rows of data are used to determine the contents of the column. For example, if the first 10 rows contain numbers, the whole column is treated as if it contains numbers. In this situation, the software may return strings as zero or blank.