Is there a standard or open format which can be used to describe the formating of a flat file. My company integrates many different customer file formats. With an XML file it's easy to get or create an XSD to describe the XML file format. I'm looking for something similar to describe a flat file format (fixed width, delimited etc). Stylus Studio uses a proprietary .conv format to do this. That .conv format can be used at runtime to transform an arbitrary flat file to an XML file. I was just wondering if there was any more open or standards based method for doing the same thing.
I'm looking for one method of describing a variety of flat file formats whether they are fixed width or delimited, so CSV is not an answer to this question.
Best Answer
XFlat: http://www.infoloom.com/gcaconfs/WEB/philadelphia99/lyons.HTM#N29 http://www.unidex.com/overview.htm
For complex cases (e.g. log files) you may consider a lexical parser.