Alteryx Select tool

The Alteryx Select tool is useful for detecting the columns, and we can rename the names of the columns. You can also use this Alteryx select tool to change the required column data type and size.

Alteryx Select tool Example

Drag the Input Tool, and select the Customers_text text file from the configuration tab. From the below image, you can see that the file has fifteen records. If you look at the text file metadata, all the columns are of the string data type.

Choose the Input text or CSV file

Alteryx Select Tool Data Types Conversion Example

Drag and drop the Select tool to the canvas and connect the Input tool.

Alteryx Select Tool - Datatype Conversion 3

Within the Alteryx Select Tool Configuration tab, you can see the source column names, data types, column size, and empty fields to rename the column and provide the description.

By clicking the down arrow beside the type shows you the list of available types. Please change the data type of an Alteryx column as per your requirement.

Alteryx Select Tool - Datatype Conversion list

Here, we changed the yearly income, sales to double, and EmpID to a 32-bit integer. Then we renamed the Yearly Income as Income and Occupation as Profession.

Please change the Data type of the columns

Hit the Run button to see the select tool result of data type conversion. In this example, we want to load this data type conversion output into SQL Server’s new table Alteryx Select Tool. We have already explained the steps in the Load Text File into SQL Server article. So, add the output Data tool and name the table.

Add Output Data Table Name

The below image shows you the Alteryx SQL configuration settings.

Settings to Write to File or Database options

Run the Select tool workflow.

Run the Alteryx Select Tool - Datatype Conversion

Output

Within the Management Studio, you can see the table result.

Sql Result Table

For the data type, you can look at the table definition.

Open Table designer to see the Datatype