Null Handling During Import Process

Null handling during the import process in RIPL can be tricky. When importing a text or string field from Excel, it can import null values as non-null values although in the RIPL data grid they appear null because a blank string is not always true null value in Excel or SQL. While strings fields generally aren’t used in risk analysis they are on occasion used in rule columns. This issue is usually reported when exporting out of Access, then into Excel, and then into RIPL.

1. To determine if this is an issue after an import, open the RIPL data grid where data was imported into and do a count column operations on the string column that was imported. Right-click the column in question and select column operations.

2. Click the Count checkbox.



3. Note in the source column the count is 350, and the total record count is 350. Nulls can be seen in the Source column. This indicates that the problem is occurring, but it does not occur on every import for every string.

   

4. To solve the issue, map the string field in the import process by selecting Use Transformation Values.

   

5. Once the menu displays, click OK. The null field in Excel will properly import as null. Alternatively, the data can be exported to Access and then imported into RIPL. You can also directly import the data from Access.