The Fixed Width Parser allows you to handle fixed width files that have no column headers or delimiter characters. In the event source properties, you define column descriptors that enable you to generate process objects that represent the fixed width content.

For example, you might define the structure of your data files in the Columns Descriptor property, you might enter a list of column names and column lengths (in parentheses):

This enables the Fixed Width Parser to read the fixed width file and generate a process object that structures the records based on these values. This is similar to the Delimited Content Parser, with the addition of column widths. These values also define the default set of field names if you use custom process objects.

Both the built-in and custom process objects are available for this event source type.

Because the connector verifies data consistency, you might encounter an exception error if some rows in the fixed width file are longer or shorter than the specified column descriptors. To ignore extra characters and add trailing spaces to rows with fewer characters than expected, you can enable the Ignore Column Inconsistencies property.