Charles Kincaid (3/6/2008)
With all due respect to all of y'all after these many years I've seen some zany stuff. I'm rarely surprised any more. I write file parsers all the time. I just don't have to use SQL to do the job. I'm also not reading millions of rows at a crack either.We all have to play the cards we are dealt. We don't have to like them and we get to complain about them.
I agree with your point of view, as I've done the same type of thing and have written many custom file parsers and custom ETL applications over the years. Honestly I don't think I've ever seen a header/footer file format in which all of the headers and footers could be so easily discarded without a second thought.