Exporting and Importing Raw Template Data

In addition to the powerful support for data filtering within the Tabular BTM, you can also output your template attributes as tab-delimited text. This enables you to view and manipulate the output using software such as Microsoft Excel. The Tabular BTM also allows you to import data from tab-delimited text – this means that it is now possible to export the data, edit it externally as you require and then import it back into the Virtual Environment, with your modifications being quickly and easily applied across the templates in your model. This can offer a significant time saving over previous versions of the software, which only allowed data to be manually input on a template-by-template basis.

 

The export and import feature provides a number of helpful features to make things easy for you to manage the data:

 

-          Export either all columns in the current tab group, or only those in the active tab. This allows you to configure exactly what appears in the output.

 

-          Exporting only takes account of the template visible in the grid. So, if you use data filtering, you’ll only get output for the filtered templates, rather than all templates. This means you can get the output for the templates you are interested in, rather than having to get it for all templates.

 

-          Exported output is sorted based on the current sort column in the active tab. This means you can choose the sort order of the output prior to export.

 

-          Importing previously exported data works regardless of whether the columns are visible in the current tab, or if the ordering of the columns differs in the output from that used in the tabs. If the Tabular BTM can identify the appropriate column from its header text, it will modify the value.

 

-          Importing previously exported data also works regardless of sort order of the templates in the output. The Tabular BTM will identify its templates using a handle in the output, to ensure that the values are set on the correct template regardless of the order.

 

-          Importing will also take account of the data format of the values, even if it differs from the currently active input format (e.g. data being imported is in IP, while the Virtual Environment is currently running in Metric). The Tabular BTM will do the appropriate conversion during import to keep things valid in the current input format.

 

-          Full error-checking is performed when importing, with a list of issues being displayed on completion of the import process. This allows you to review all the errors in one place, rather than having to deal with repeated error messages while the import progresses – it also allows you to fix the problematic values in-place, if you want to.

This section details the process for exporting data and then re-importing it.