The Generic reader acts as a wrapper for the true reader which will be used when the translation is done. At run-time, once the actual reader is known, the Generic reader will do its best to represent the intention of the translation in the chosen input format.
The Generic reader takes a file or multiple files, folder, URL, or database name as the input dataset. If the format that is ultimately targeted requires an input folder, the Generic reader will turn the input filename into a folder by removing the file name part of the path.
Because the format it will read from can be, and is by default, published, workspace authors who want to set up specific data flows for a particular format can use the ParameterFetcher transformer to retrieve the name of the format that actually is being read to, and then potentially route features to other transformers using this value.
The Generic reader simply reads the features using the underlying reader whose name is provided in the Input Format parameter.
Adding an additional reader or a schema reader to a workspace
It is sometimes useful to pre-configure parameters that are specific to individual input formats. For example, to read from a database, a collection of connection parameters must be specified.
You can add an additional reader or a schema reader to the workspace. The first reader in the multi-reader will be the Generic one, and this one will contain all the input feature types. The second reader may or may not have feature types, but will be used to communicate any format-specific reader settings to the Generic reader, when that format is used as the format for the Generic reader.
For example, if the Input Format here is set to Microsoft SQL Server Spatial, the settings specified for the Microsoft SQL Server Spatial reader will be transferred to the Microsoft SQL Server Spatial reader that the Generic reader will use.
Input
Input Format
Select the name of the format that will be used at run-time.
If no valid format is specified, the reader will try to guess the name from the filename extension of the source dataset (if the dataset is a file).