Extracting the data from Microsoft Excel (Unstructured Data stage)

Prerequisites
Before you start the installation and configuration of Unstructured Data stage, make sure that you meet the system requirements and that you have installed all the prerequisite software.

Supported data sources
The Unstructured Data stage supports only Microsoft Excel files as the source file.

Data ranges
When you use the Unstructured Data stage, you can extract data from a specified data range in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Types of data that can be extracted from Microsoft Excel
You can use the Unstructured Data stage to extract several types of data from a Microsoft Excel file.

Designing jobs that extract data from Microsoft Excel file
You can use Unstructured Data stage to design jobs that read unstructured data from Microsoft Excel files.

Using job parameters
Unstructured Data stage does not have the ability to create new job parameters in Configuration window. However, you can use the job parameters in the Configuration window. You must create job parameters in the Job Properties window before or after you work on the Configuration window, by selecting Edit > Job Properties from IBM® InfoSphere® DataStage® and QualityStage® Designer client. For more information about creating job parameters, see Lesson 2.4: Adding parameters in the IBM InfoSphere DataStage Parallel Job Tutorial.

Options to read data from Microsoft Excel files
Use the following options to modify how the Unstructured Data stage reads data.

Runtime column propagation
In InfoSphere DataStage, you can configure a job to propagate extra columns that are not defined in the metadata through the rest of the job. This process is known as runtime column propagation (RCP).

Examples of extracting data from Microsoft Excel files
You can build sample jobs that extract data from Microsoft Excel files.