Column Literals

SLIK allows you to enter any valid SQL function or literal value for a particular column definition.  This means that on column maps you can specify a constant literal or perform some explicit data conversion.  For example, to have a constant numeric value assigned to a destination column  you first add a column record in the source table with the following details:

ColumnID

TableID

ColumnName

ColumnTypeID

ColumnLength

142

NEW DS2: AN_Data_1_100

123

NUMERIC LITERAL

 

 

This can then be used in a column mapping to assign the value 123 to the destination column.

SLIK performs variable substitution on the source column field and thus can be used to assign variable literals such as $run_date or $task_id to a destination column.

The other literal types supported are:

DataType

Usage

Named Literal

For use on named literals, eg,

$task_id AS MyRunID. Note: SLIK does not perform any special quoting of NAMED LITERALS.

Numeric Literal

A number. SLIK will not quote numeric literals

Character Literal

A value which is to be treated as a character string

Typically the target database provides functions to perform data conversion . These can be called in the source column. For example; INTEGER (some_text_column) will convert some_text_column to an integer value, assuming it contains valid numbers.