Write External Data Source Actions

Write External Data Source actions read data from a Table dataset, and write it to an External Data Source defined in the LiveCompare hierarchy.

Action Property Description
External Data Source An External Data Source parameter referring to an External Data Source defined in the LiveCompare hierarchy.
Overwrite A Boolean parameter which determines whether data in the External Data Source will be overwritten (‘true’) or appended (‘false’). The Overwrite parameter should be set to ‘false’ for Excel External Data Sources. If this parameter is not set, ‘false’ is used as the default value.
Source A Table dataset containing data to be written to the External Data Source. For Excel, Access, SQLite, SQL Server and DB2 External Data Sources, the columns in the Table parameter or dataset must match the columns defined in the External Data Source.

Write External Data Source actions write to Access, Excel or CSV data files stored in the following directory:

<LiveCompare user data dir>\public\ExternalDataFiles

If a SQL Server or DB2 External Data Source is used, the associated SQL Server or DB2 database table is written to directly. If a CSV External Data source is used, data is written to the CSV file in Unicode format.

Example:

Write External Data Source action example.

To examine the details for a Write 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 Source table, the number of rows written to the External Data Source and the time taken for the action to complete.

Writing to CSV External Data Sources

If you have used the Write External Data Source action to write to a CSV External Data Source, you will need to modify the External Data Source’s connection string to specify the CharacterSet=Unicode qualifier. This can be done as follows.

  1. Edit the CSV External Data Source and click ‘Advanced’ to display the Connection String dialog
  2. Modify the Extended Properties portion of the Connection string, changing it from:

Extended Properties="text;HDR=Yes;FMT=Delimited";

to:

Extended Properties="text;HDR=Yes;FMT=Delimited;CharacterSet=Unicode";

  1. Click ‘Save’.

This will allow the Read External Data Source action to read the updated CSV External Data Source correctly.