File Transfer Summary

File transfer summary (FTS) document contains information about the data extract. These are plain text files containing information such as the number of columns in the data extract, number of rows and the size of the data file. The FTS document provides the starting positions, the length and the generic format of each of the column (such as character, numeric or date)

These files are often generated by export from SAS

Data purchased from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ResDac are accompanied by FTS files describing the data file structure.

NSAPH Utilities included in the data platform contain tools for reading data files described with FTS:

• Fixed Width File Reader

• Specialized parser for FTS CMS files from ResDac

• Converter of CMS files from ResDac to CSV

• Data loader for CMS files from ResDac

• Tool to slect a random subset from CMS data files