Data format

IBM Sterling Fulfillment Optimizer with Watson accepts data only in plain text formats (ASCII for standard single-byte data, or UTF-8 for multi-byte data). A detailed data dictionary is required for each file type.

The data dictionary is necessary for Fulfillment Optimizer to understand specific field formats and locations. The data dictionary varies according to the data format that is provided. At a minimum, the data dictionary must contain the following information:
  • Name of the file to which the directory refers
  • File format
  • Field name
  • Field position - sequence number for delimited files/spreadsheets files, column positions for fixed-width files
  • Field length
  • Field description - description of values that are contained in the field
    Note: Files use either a comma (,) or pipe symbol (|) as the separator. The separator is specified in description for each data type.
Table 1. The table displays the field types and size limits for data.
Type Size
Small integer 2 bytes/5digits
INT 4 bytes/10 digits
BIGINT 8 bytes/19 digits
VARCHAR(X) X bytes
STRING
DATE YYYY-MM-DD
TIME HH:MI:SS
DATETIME YYYYMMDD HH:MI:SS