NOT a Guru!
Keeping it simple, without the hype. PC tips and Internet advice for mom and pop businesses.
Keeping it simple, without the hype. PC tips and Internet advice for mom and pop businesses.
There are a number of ways that you can create an online database. Some of these work with mySQL. For example, Wordpress blogs store their posts, users and other data on a mySQL database that is connected with PHP.
Other online databases will work with text files. Typically, these run with CGI programs — although you might find some PHP programs that will also access a flat file text database.
My Current Project.
I happen to be working on a database with over 70,000 entries in Access that has been converted to Excel files. I have been asked to put it online. I have a program I bought a couple of years ago that will work with unlimited text files of any size, so I am in the process of converting the Excel file (CSV) to flat text files. The script calls for pipe delimited separators
“Delimiters” refer what is between the columns so that your database program knows where each column is. For example, if your first column was numbers and your second column was words, a pipe delimited format would look like this: 12345 | Numbers.
Common delimiters include:
- Comma;
- Tab;
- Colon; and
- Pipe (as above).
The comma format is the most popular and by default, your Windows computer will use the comma format.
How to Universally Change the Delimiter Values.
You can easily change how your data is exported to text without having to run a search and replace on your file (i.e., replacing commas with colons). When you change your computer’s universal default, your export will automatically be formatted how you would like it to be formatted. Here’s how.
- Click your start button that’s on the lower left side of your screen.
- Click Settings.
- Click Control Panel.
- Select Date, Time, Language and Regional Options from your Control Panel options.
Step 5. Click the task that reads “Change the format of numbers, dates, and times,” as shown in the screen shot.
Step 6. In your regional settings menu that will pop up, you then will want to click the CUSTOMIZE option as shown below.
Step 7. After clicking the “customize” option, you will see a menu that looks like the screen shot below. Add in the list separator that you want. In the example, I put in the vertical bar because that’s what my script calls for.
From this point forward, all Excel spreadsheets that I export to text have the pipe separator. I can change this back to commas at any time by following the steps above.
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