Read External Data Source Actions

Read External Data Source actions read data from an External Data Source defined in the LiveCompare hierarchy, and store the data in a Table dataset.

Action Property	Description
Default Data	A Table parameter or dataset which is copied to the Result dataset if the specified External Data Source does not contain any rows.
External Data Source	An External Data Source parameter referring to an External Data Source defined in the LiveCompare hierarchy.
Result	A Table dataset in which to store the retrieved data.
Select Statement	A String parameter or dataset containing a single SELECT statement. The SELECT statement is run against the External Data Source to determine which rows to retrieve into the Result dataset, and it may refer to any of the tables defined in the specified External Data Source. Select Statements are supported for SQL Server, SQLite, Access, DB2 and Custom External Data Sources.

Example:

To examine the details for a Read External Data Source action, double-click the action node, or select ‘View Details’ from the node’s context menu. The Details screen displays the number of rows read from the External Data Source or the Default Data table, and the time taken for the action to complete.

Limitations

The Read External Data Source action uses a Microsoft technology called ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) to read files. ADO is able to read non-Unicode CSV files, however when reading Unicode CSV files, it ignores the delimiters and stores all the data from each row in a single field. To use data from a Unicode CSV file as input to a workflow, open the file in Excel and save it as an Excel workbook (.xlsx). The workbook can then be used to create an Excel External Data Source in LiveCompare.