Data provision

You start by connecting your data source, which can be a relational database or local flat files.

In essence, you provide the data in some format to be imported and Import imports this into your instance.

Import supports relational databases and flat files, i.e. files that contain data in a tabular format where each row represents a record and each column represents a field in that record. The most common format for flat files is CSV (comma-separated values), but Import also supports TSV (tab-separated values).

When connecting to a remote data source, the tables are provided for you from that database.

But when you stream your local CSV files, the process can be more iterative and manual.

Import requires all CSV files to have a header row and at least one row of data. The header row speficies how the data in the file should be interpreted and contains information for each field. For more information about CSV files and the header format, see Operations Manual → CSV header format. Keep in mind that the column names must be unique, i.e. it is not possible to have two columns with the same name within the same file.

The CSV files are provided in the Data source panel of Import. You can browse for them or drag and drop them into the panel. Once a file is added to the panel, you can preview the header and the first row of data in the file by expanding the file.

When you provide CSV files to Import, only a reference to your local files is kept. This is used to send the necessary commands to stream the data to your target database when you run the import. Your local files themselves are not uploaded anywhere and therefore, if you reload the page before running the import, the files are no longer available to the page and you need to provide them again. This is due to security features of your browser.