ProductsMapForceMapping DesignMapping Interface

MapForce® 2012 includes an advanced interface with an array of features that help developers design and implement data mappings quickly and easily. MapForce supports mapping data to/from virtually any format including XML, databases, flat files, EDI, Excel 2007+, XBRL, and Web services.

Graphical Mapping Interface

The MapForce interface is designed to facilitate graphical data integration with many different options for managing, visualizing, manipulating, and executing individual mappings and complex mapping projects.

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Project Window

The Project window is convenient for working with large and complex data integration projects. Each mapping can be viewed and managed using a simple and familiar document navigation hierarchy. Individual files and folders are easily manipulated in the project window using a right click menu where you can add files, open mappings, copy, delete, insert Web services, generate code, and so on.

MapForce ships with an Examples project that contains a wide variety of sample mappings.

The project window is complemented by the Project menu, which offers some additional controls and functionality.

Two types of projects can be defined:

• A collection of individual mappings
• A related set of mappings for use as a WSDL mapping project

Both project types support code generation for the entire project.

Design Pane

The design pane is the part of the MapForce interface where you graphically define your mapping components, add functions and filters for data manipulation, and drag connectors to transform between source and target formats.

The design pane includes many user-friendly features that help you to easily work with, identify, and redefine even the most complex mappings. For example:

• Clicking an item name automatically selects it for connecting to another item
• Useful popups can be prompted by positioning your mouse over certain parts of the mapping connections where you can view additional information such as mapping target item(s) or datatype
• Connections are easily moved by clicking and dragging to the desired target
• Duplicate connectors (from the same source to another target) can be created by dragging a connection while simply holding down the CTRL key
• Activating the autoconnect child items icon allows you to automatically connect all child items of the same name under the parent item
• A find function lets you easily search for nodes in particularly complex mapping components

Visual Alignment Guides

You can make complex mappings more organized easier to trace in the mapping window by aligning components. When you move a component in the mapping window, visual auto-alignment guidelines appear, allowing you to align the component to any other component.

In the screen shot below, the lower filter component has been moved. The guidelines show that it is aligned with the multiply function on the left and to the sum function directly above the new component position.

Function Libraries Window

MapForce provides an extensible library of data processing functions, which are available in the library window of the design interface. The library window displays the currently available libraries, as well as the individual functions of each library, in a hierarchical tree structure that you can expand and collapse. To add a function to your mapping, simply drag it from the library into the design pane.

For quick reference when working with data processing functions, the “show library name” button allows you to display or hide the name of the library that contains each function used in your data mapping, as shown below.

Refer to the data processing page for more information.

Overview Window

The MapForce overview window allows you to visualize an entire data mapping project and zoom in on specific areas as needed. In addition, while scrolling through the project itself, the overview window indicates your position within the map. This feature helps you navigate even the largest data mapping project with ease.

Messages Window

The messages window displays any validation warnings or error messages that might occur during the mapping process. Clicking a specific message in the window highlights it in the design pane so that you can easily navigate to and address the problem.

XSLT/XQuery Tab

When you are performing an XML-based mapping, the XSLT/XQuery tab allows you to preview the XSLT 1.0/2.0 or XQuery code that is generated by MapForce on-the-fly. The tab that is made available to you depends on the selection that you make in the MapForce toolbar.

Once you are satisfied with the code preview, it is suggested that you generate royalty-free program code (see below) for a much faster execution speed.

Database Query Tab

The database query tab allows you to directly query any major database independently of your mapping. When you connect to a database, MapForce displays its tables in a hierarchical tree in the browser pane. You can then use the SQL editor tab to display, edit, and execute SQL or SQL/XML statements, either by opening existing SQL files or creating SQL statements from scratch using drag and drop and auto-complete functionality.

You can execute your SQL script and view the results in tabular form and save both the retrieved data and the SQL script individually to separate files.

For more information, see the Database Mapping page.

Output Tab

The output tab allows you to preview the transformation output created by the MapForce engine based on your mapping design.

For more information, see the Mapping Output page.

StyleVision Integration (report generation) Tabs

MapForce integration with StyleVision ostensibly adds a wide variety of publication formats to those already supported by MapForce. Now, as long as you have StyleVision installed on your machine, you can create a template design to render transformation output in attractive HTML, RTF, PDF, or Word 2007+ reports.

For more information, see the StyleVision Integration page.

Code Generation

In addition to XSLT and XQuery, MapForce supports the autogeneration of royalty-free application code in Java, C#, and C++, which enables you to automate data integration and repeatable business processes.

For more information, see the Code Generation page.

Additional Features

In addition to its user-friendly interface, MapForce is optimized with a variety of time-saving features that simplify data mapping projects and accelerate the development of high-quality applications. Just a few of these are detailed below.

Refactoring Existing Data Mappings

The pace at which business evolves today necessitates the evolution of critical data structures as well. To help manage your data mappings when data structures are updated, MapForce detects when a source or target XML Schema, FlexText configuration, EDI configuration file, Excel 2007+ document, XBRL taxonomy, or Web service is changed in an external application. MapForce immediately alerts you of the change, and you can ignore the message or reload the data structure to see what has changed in your mapping.

For instance, in the screenshot below, the Amount element in the ShortPO.xsd file has been deleted outside of MapForce, and a new element called Total has been added. After reloading the schema, MapForce indicates the change with an icon and highlights the involved connections in orange, allowing you to refactor the mapping with a few simple clicks. Once you have refactored the mapping, MapForce removes any icons and highlighted connections to indicate that your data mapping structures are in sync.

Displaying Datatypes

The "show types" button displays the schema datatypes for each element or attribute in your data mapping project.

Connecting Matching Children

While you are designing a data mapping, MapForce connects matching child elements as you drag connecting lines between the elements of the source and target by default. This feature saves a significant amount of time, especially when developing large mappings containing structures containing elements with multiple children. This function is completely customizable through the Connect Matching Children dialog.

MapForce also checks for all matching descendent elements and connects all of these based on one user-defined connection.

Very often, a data mapping project will involve XML content models that contain fragments of XML that need to be copied to the target schema without being modified; for example, fragments of HTML are often embedded in other schemas for documentation purposes. This feature allows you to simply map the entire XML fragment from the source to the target schema, and all children can be mapped automatically with their entire structure intact.

In addition, if you need to make some changes to your mapping along the way - to accommodate for underlying schema changes, for instance - MapForce offers a variety of automation features that help ease this process. For example, when you re-map a parent element, you will be asked if you would like to automatically reassign child elements or any other descendent connections accordingly.

Find Dialog

Data sources and targets can often be very large and complex, making particular nodes difficult to find. Because of this, MapForce includes a find dialog so that you can instantly navigate to the specific node(s) you need to transform in your data mapping. This is particularly useful when working with long and complex data formats like EDI and XBRL.

Schema Generation

If your do not have an associated schema for your XML instance, MapForce is able to generate a sample XML Schema behind-the-scenes for use as a content model component for your data mapping. This option will appear when you attempt to open or load an XML document in MapForce.

Editing XML Schemas

In addition to the robust XML mapping capabilities of MapForce, you now have the option to edit the actual schema definition of any XML Schema loaded in MapForce using Altova XMLSpy®. Simply right click on any XML Schema in the MapForce design window and select “Edit Schema Definition in XMLSpy.”

To take advantage of this feature, you must have XMLSpy installed on your computer. XMLSpy is included in Altova’s specially-priced product bundle, the MissionKit®, which offers up to eight Altova products for less than the price of two. Learn about the features supported by the entire suite of Altova tools here.

Discover how the intuitive and easy-to-use MapForce® 2012 interface can simplify and accelerate your next data mapping projects. Download a free 30-day trial of MapForce.