importing fixed-width w/o leading spaces

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importing fixed-width w/o leading spaces

Author

Topic

albertkohl
Aged Yak Warrior

740 Posts

Posted - 2009-12-03 : 16:12:07

okay, so here's the stroy, i have a data set, it's all in a fixed-width format, and lets say there are only 3 columns

field width
fname 30
mi 1
lname 30

data looks like:
albert
w
kohl

(but there are leading spaces)
when i import the data into sql, (say columns are all varchar)
it comes out like:

|albert________________________|

is there a setting i can adjust so that when SSIS imports the data, it doesnt import the leading spaces? on a table 200 Million rows plus, all these blank values will total up to be a HUGE waste of disk space.

tkizer
Almighty SQL Goddess

38200 Posts

Posted - 2009-12-03 : 17:20:01

Leading or trailing spaces? In either case, trim it during the import by applying a function to the column.

Tara Kizer
Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/

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