Export data

• FREE. This is suitable when the fields in the text file are separated by a specified delimiter, such as a comma.
• FIXED. This is suitable when the fields to load are in specific columns that have a fixed length.

Only available for FREE fields and only relevant when outputting.text files from a database.

• Selected. A space is output after the delimiter.
• Cleared. No space is output after the delimiter.

Only available for FREE fields. The text qualifier is placed around any text and memo fields in the database, allowing you to have special characters (for example line breaks) in a text field. It is strongly recommended that you use a text qualifier at all times, but is only essential if the text field contains either line breaks, or the character defined as your delimiter.

For the qualifier to be correctly read into the database, the qualifier must be doubled. For example, the following is a valid text file, as output by Surpac and some other database products. It uses a comma delimiter and a double quote text qualifier. The following field value :

This is a test of "double" quotes

Will be output to a text file out of Surpac as:

"This is a test of ""double"" quotes"

When this field is read back, the doubled quotes ("") will be converted back to a single quote (") and so the data is not changed.

If the data did not contain the double quotes, however (for example the following) :

"This is a test of "double" quotes"

The data would be read into Surpac as

This is a test of quotes

because it stops reading at the first quote, and begins again at the second one.

For some field values, this could cause validation problems. For this reason, the qualifier must match what appears in the data. Another reason that the qualifier chosen when loading a text file must be correct, is that nothing may be loaded from the text file into the database. Loading to the database only begins when the text qualifier is first encountered.

For a FREE format field, this field shows the column number in the text file. The column before the first designated delimiter in the text file is column one. The column that follows the delimiter is column two, and so on.

For a FIXED format field, this field shows the start position of the field in the text file. The first position is column one with the column numbers incremented for each character position on the line.

Length is writeable only for FIXED format fields. It is the length of the field from the start column.

The mathematical operation that defines the constraint. The operands are:

• < less than
• <= less than or equal to
• > greater than
• >= greater than or equal to
• <> not equal to
• = equal to

The value for the constraint. Press TAB to add an additional row, or right-click in the left column to add or remove constraint rows.

When you have multiple constraint rows, Surpac returns only the records that pass all the constraints. However, you can use the hole_id field and the = operator to return records that pass only one of the constraints. In that situation, an OR operator is used between the constraints. For example, the following constraint would return two records:

• hole_id = WRC075
• hole_id = WRC044

Examples:

For a surveying example, to select all the survey stations with a specific status, you could add a constraint: status = C

The Constraint value for this constraint is C.

To select drillholes or survey stations in a particular area, you could add three constraints:

• y < 9010.000
• x > 2450.000
• z >= 705.000

To select all of the holes where the collar is on a specific bench of an open pit, you could enter two constraints similar to these:

• z > 149
• z < 151

Loads a constraint from the .dbc file you choose.

Note: Normally, a set of constraints is suitable for only the table on which it was created, or for tables that have the same or a very similar structure.