You can use fixed width parsing based on a data definition that comes from an Oracle GoldenGate source definition file. This is similar to Cobol copybook because a source definition file contains the position and the length of each field of participating tables. To use a source definition file, you must set the following properties:

fixed.userdefs.tables=qasource.HEADER
fixed.userdefs.qasource.HEADER.columns=optype,schemaandtable
fixed.userdefs.qasource.HEADER.optype=vchar 3
fixed.userdefs.qasource.HEADER.schemaandtable=vchar 30

fixed.header=qasource.HEADER

The following example defines a header section of a total length of 33 characters; the first 3 characters are the operation type, and the last 30 characters is the table name. The layout of all records to be parsed must start with the complete header section as defined in the fixed.userdefs properties. For each record, the header section is immediately followed by the content of all column data for the corresponding table. The column data must be strictly laid out according to its offset and length defined in the source definition file. Specifically, the offset information is the fourth field (Fetch Offset) of the column definition and the length information is the third field (External Length) of the column definition. The following is an example of a definition for GG.JMSCAP_TCUSTMER:

Definition for table GG.JMSCAP_TCUSTMER
Record length: 78
Syskey: 0
Columns: 4
CUST_CODE   64      4        0  0  0 1 0      4      4      0 0 0 0 0 1    0 1 0
NAME        64     30       10  0  0 1 0     30     30      0 0 0 0 0 1    0 0 0
CITY        64     20       46  0  0 1 0     20     20      0 0 0 0 0 1    0 0 0
STATE        0      2       72  0  0 1 0      2      2      0 0 0 0 0 1    0 0 0
End of definition

The fixed width data for GG.JMSCAP_TCUSTMER may be similar to the following where the offset guides have been added to each section for clarity:

0         1         2         3  0         1         2         3         4         5         6         7         8
012345678901234567890123456789012012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
I  GG.JMSCAP_TCUSTMER            WILL      BG SOFTWARE CO.                     SEATTLE                   WA    
I  GG.JMSCAP_TCUSTMER            JANE      ROCKY FLYER INC.                    DENVER                    CO    
I  GG.JMSCAP_TCUSTMER            DAVE      DAVE'S PLANES INC.                  TALLAHASSEE               FL    
I  GG.JMSCAP_TCUSTMER            BILL      BILL'S USED CARS                    DENVER                    CO    
I  GG.JMSCAP_TCUSTMER            ANN       ANN'S BOATS                         SEATTLE                   WA    
U  GG.JMSCAP_TCUSTMER            ANN       ANN'S BOATS                         NEW YORK                  NY

You can choose to specify shorter data records, which means that only some of the earlier columns are present. To do this, the following requirements must be met:

• None of the missing or omitted columns are part of the key and

• all columns that are present contain complete data according to their respective External Length information

  .