Excel Import of Units (Version 3.0)

General Information

A file format defines syntax and semantics of data within files. It represents a bidirectional mapping between information and its storage in a medium. Knowledge of the file format is crucial for the interpretation of data stored in a file.

This specification details the layout of data within a file. The document describes the following:

• exchanged information

• format and layout of the exchanged document

Overall Conventions

Software

The document comes in .xlsx format. Therefore, to build the file a program needs to be installed that can handle the XLSX format, such as Microsoft Excel. Documents which implement this file format specification need to be saved as .xlsx files.

Worksheet

An Excel file can be structured in multiple work sheets. Each work sheet has a name that must be adhered to.

Each sheet has two header lines and a data payload.

In row 1 the human readable column names are printed – the row will be ignored by import

Row 2 contains the column codes that are used by the import program to identify the content.

Then follow the data rows.

Table Columns

Column name

Each table column has a name which gives a human comprehensive short reference of the column's content.

Note: the column name is for convenience only and not used to interpret the file.

Column Code

In order to reference the column unambiguously each column gets a unique code within the worksheet.

The import program is relying on Column Codes. If Column orders are changed, the codes must be preserved.

Requirement of Contained Data

Each column of contained data can be either

• Mandatory – values MUST be present

• Optional – values MAY be present

• Conditional – values MUST be present IF a condition applies

Data types

Each column has a defined data type, i.e. a restricted set of available values. For example the data type integer only allows whole numbers while the data type string allows any sequences of characters. Additionally the data type string can be syntactically further constrained by a grammar.

Table 1: available data types

Column Description

Description of the content for each column.

Translatability

The content of each column can be either translatable or not. In case a column's content data are translatable, the column code in the header is suffixed by a locale code comprising of a language code, an underscore and a country code. Example of locale codes: "de_DE", "en_US".

IN/OUT

For each column it can be defined whether the contained data is relevant for import or only gives additional information to a human reader of the file.

Identifiers (IDs)

References within the exchange file are made by an ID. There are two kinds of IDs to be separated:

• Transient ID

Any sequence of characters can be treated as a transient ID when it cannot be confused with a code or an IRDI. It is recommended to use 6 digits long zero padded running numbers, e.g. 000001. The running number must be unique within the file and will be replaced by a code during import.

• Persistent ID

A persistent ID can be used for references during load of new entries and for updates of existing entries. For updates of data that are already stored in eptos using a persistent ID is mandatory. The format of the persistent ID in eptos is the international registration data identifier (IRDI). For classification classes also the coded name may be used.

When an import file contains more than one ID for the same entity, the following precedence is taken:

• Persistent ID (IRDI)

• Coded Name

• Transient ID

Import of Units

Worksheet is used for describing Units.

Units Import

NOTE:

If empty, optional columns will be ignored for Import.