In Elixir Data Designer the data from a normal or a GZIP-compressed text file can be accessed using the Text DataSource.

The tool provides encoding support, which includes multi-lingual formats, so text data sources which are encoded in different formats can be added. Also, text data sources with fields having different date, time and timestamp formats can be added.

A Text DataSource can be created simply by right-clicking on a CSV file on the repository and selecting “Define as a Text DataSource”. To create a Text DataSource from a GZIP-compressed CSV or TXT file, open the DataSource Wizard, choose the Text DataSource type and specify the file URL. GZIP is designed for single file compression and can work on any URL. The advantages of GZIP compression support include significantly reducing file size, saving space on hard disk, and therefore reducing data maintenance cost.

In addition to straightforward field-based access, regular expressions are supported to give power users very flexible filtering and extraction options.