Data parsing
The parsing of data is absolutely essential for the enterprise. As an enterprise F# developer at Jet.com, I come across this data transformation pattern on a daily basis. Every case of LOB applications' integration with a third-party system - ERP, Bank, or Carrier - involves data parsing on the ingesting edges. Despite a plethora of integration technologies around that promise great data quality, timeliness, integrity, you name it...time and again, I am forced by my contractors to deal with flat fixed format files, CSV files, and Excel files. This is the boring reality of today.
On this battlefield, the weaponry varies from case-by-case hand-coded solutions based on Regex and F# active patterns to fairly generic solutions targeting whole classes of incoming data with F# type providers. Some typical examples of semi-generic solutions are invoices in the form of CSV files and Excel files that are to be persisted in the SQL server for further processing, reconciliation...
