I am trying to create a synonym for a delimited flat file.

I can create the synonym easily enough, and using App Studio's "check" feature to inspect it shows no errors.

But when I go to sample the data, there is a ten second delay followed by this:

0 NUMBER OF RECORDS IN TABLE=        0  LINES=      0

When I try to create a report, no fields show up in the design tool.

This used to work for me. Has anyone else encountered anything like this?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Squatch,

You need a FILEDEF for a flat file.

FILEDEF SQUATCH DISK c:\temp\squatch.ftm

No, I'm just trying to sample the data using the Reporting Server.

I've found out that I can create a synonym that works for a single delimited file, but not for a collection of them. That's where you can use a percent wildcard character to specify more than one file.

For example, I want the synonym to read all the files that start with "scorecard%" in a certain directory.

I did this a few months ago and it worked fine. We've upgraded to 8.1.05 since then, so I'm wondering if that has something to do with it.

I am now getting this error if I try to refresh the synonym in App Studio:

(FOC1515) WRONG SQL ENGINE TAG SPECIFIED DFIX

And after a 10 second delay, I get this error when sampling data:

 SET GRAPHENGINE=GRAPH53
 TABLE FILE scorecard
 PRINT *
 WHERE RECORDLIMIT EQ 500
 WHERE READLIMIT EQ 500
 END
 (FOC1293) DFIX: ERROR IN REINITIALIZE WITH NEW DATA BUFFER
 (FOC000) ERROR MESSAGE TEXT MISSING:  0

Very frustrating!

I found out what the issue was.

When creating a synonym that reads from a collection of delimited files, you must select "One-time retrieval" instead of "File Listener".

It seems that the File Listener deletes your source files after they are processed into a report, graph, etc. That seems to be the default behavior, anyway.

It also didn't help that I was using the percent sign as a file wildcard character instead of an asterisk.