How to create a dataset out of .DAT file in ADF?

Question

I have a .DAT file in a FTP server that I need to read and load its data into MS SQL Server using ADF. I am however unable to create a dataset using this .DAT file. I would like to create a dataset having just a single column with all the data of the .DAT file for me to use in the ADF. Please suggest any solutions.

Answer 1

Hi Dhananjay Singh,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum and thanks for posting your query. As per the documentation, ADF copy activity doesn't support DAT file format.

There is no direct or out of box dataset for DAT Format files. But if you would like to copy the DAT file extension with a Copy activity supported data format to SQL column, what you can do is you can also use the Delimited Text Format dataset and specify the extension of the file as .DAT file.

Once you have created the dataset, you can use the Copy Data activity in your pipeline to copy the data from the .DAT file to your SQL Server.

Here is an feature request submitted by a different user in Azure feedback forum. Please feel free to up-vote and comment on it to help increase the priority of this feature request: create a new Linked Service connector for DAT Files

Hope this info helps.

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Answer 2

I have a .DAT file

.DAT is just a file extention without any further meaning. What's the file format?