Column Transformer is a Java program/library that can take a column-based text file and generate a new text file with a series of column-based transformations applied to it. It is similar to the way that a Hyperion Essbase load rule will take an input file and modify it. It’s main difference (as far as I can tell) from other column-based transformation tools is that this one can synthesize new columns and work with those, whereas other tools seem to assume that the list of columns will be static.

For example, imagine a text file that we want to process with an Essbase load rule. The format of the text file is such that it has four columns of data and they are delimited with commas. In a load rule we might apply a transformation where we split the contents of column 2 (the third column since enumeration starts with 0) on a certain character or width and then have two columns instead of one, giving us a total of five columns. Subsequent operations may create more columns or even remove columns. The “rules” in the set of transformations are applied one after another (again this is similar to the field edits that an Essbase load rule can perform and that must occur in a certain order).

Column Transformer is licensed under the Apache Software License version 2.0 and can be found in the Column Transformer GitHub repository.