Question

Attribute Name Format Limitations in Hyper Writer

  • 13 January 2023
  • 2 replies
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I've found not documentation around any name formatting limitations for Attributes for the Hyper file Writer. When I work in Tableau Prep, I have no issues writing a file with a field name like "Budget$" to a hyper file. I've found in FME that when writing to an Excel file, it also takes such a name, but when using the Hyper writer, it drops the "$" and replaces it with underscore "_". Why is it doing this? Is this a mistake in creating the code for the Writer or is it a Necessity and if it is a necessity, shouldn't this be documented?


2 replies

Userlevel 5
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The $ character might be a special character for the Hyper writer. Every format has its limitations in that regard, some more than others and I agree it would be great if there would be some documentation available on this.

I understand some formats have limitations, but what seems to have no logic here is Tableau, that uses Hyper files as native/preferred format allows the symbols in the field names but the FME Writer to this format does not. This seems like a flaw in the code that created the Writer for Hyper in FME to not handle this.

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