GRLOADER substituting key values with erroneous data

Products

• CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager
• CA Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

Trying to insert new configuration items using resource_name, dns_name, host_name, asset_num, mac_address, and serial_number.  

The process keeps substituting the value I entered in resource_name, asset_num, and dns_name with one that does not exist in the ca_owned_resource table. 

Two different simulated runs.  On one, the values were substituted in all records whereas in the second case it only substituted one of them. 

Environment

Release : 17.2 or higher

Component : SERVICE DESK MANAGER

Resolution

This is an expected behavior. GrLoader relies on the cell type to determine whether it is an number or text.

If a number is sent as value in a cell, excel by default sets the cell as Number type, so GRLoader when reading the spreadsheet thinks it is a number cell and tries converting to an integer( and becomes maximum value 2147483647).

If a string is sent as value in a cell, excel by default sets the cell as Text Type, so GRloader reads it as Text.

So it is necessary to set the custom format for the fields which are of string type as text format in the excel sheet just like the date fields are set a custom type of DateFormat as Processing the each cell to identify a type with the column heading provided is too costly and would literally slow down the loading.