Fixed-Length Records

In fixed-length or fixed-format records, each field starts and ends at the same place in every record. A data file that contains data records of equal and constant length might be organized as Figure 52 shows.

aaabbbbcccddddggghhhh

The data file illustrated in Figure 52 has three records. Each record has a field of three characters followed by a field of four characters, so the total record length is seven characters. The file does not contain any separation between records; delimiters are unnecessary because all fields have the same length. VARCHAR data types are therefore always the fixed maximum size of the field.

When you define a fixed-length format, you specify the length of each field. The ipload utility calculates the offset for each field and the total length of the record from the field lengths that you supply.