ProductsMapForceFlat File Mapping

Altova MapForce® 2008 includes flexible support for integrating flat files with XML, database, EDI, and Excel 2007 data and for mapping flat file data to Web services operations.

Flat files such as CSV (comma-separated values) and text documents are employed by many different applications and are often used as an exchange format between dissimilar programs. As companies continue to expand and grow through globalization and mergers and acquisitions, the ability to programmatically integrate or convert this semi-structured data into other prevalent formats is a common requirement.

Many organizations continue to utilize legacy software that can no longer be modified, but produces useful output in the form of text files. Integrating these applications into a modern computing environment can be challenging. The structure of flat files and text documents varies from application to application, making processing and integrating this data with other data formats increasingly difficult.

MapForce supports flat files as both the source and target of a mapping. MapForce does not limit you to one-to-one mappings - you can mix multiple sources and multiple targets to map any combination of data formats.

MapForce® 2008 Enterprise Edition also includes the unique FlexText utility for parsing and integrating arbitrarily structured text files. Learn more about FlexText here.

When you load a flat file into the MapForce design window, MapForce presents you with a dialog box that allows you to specify whether the file is CSV or fixed length (FLF), then select the respective settings associated with the file.

The data in the document is displayed in a window, and you can append, insert, and remove fields as well as change field header names and values as required before importing the file.

You can also choose how you want MapForce to handle empty flat file fields. The default setting is to render empty fields as empty elements in the data target. Or, you can use the settings dialog to treat empty fields as absent so they are not rendered at all in the target data structure.

When you click OK, the content model of the flat file is displayed in the mapping design window. Once you have loaded all of the content models required for your mapping, simply drag connecting lines between the source and target structures to connect matching elements.

 View a Flash demo showing flat file mapping in MapForce

As you design your mapping, MapForce provides a comprehensive library of data processing functions for filtering data based on Boolean conditions or manipulating data as it's converted from the source to the target format. In the screenshot above, data processing functions appear as the boxes in between the lines joining the source and the target data model.

Visit the data processing page for more information.

The built-in MapForce Engine allows you to execute and view the output of a mapping at any time. Mappings to a target XML Schema produce an XML instance document, while mappings to flat files have output in CSV or fixed-length text files, and mappings to EDI produce either EDIFACT messages or X12 transaction sets, depending upon which standard you choose. Mappings to a database produce output in the form of SQL scripts (e.g., SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE statements), which can be edited on-the-fly and run against your target database directly from within MapForce. This ability to execute and save mapping output is useful for executing one-time mappings.

An example of flat file output is shown below.

Learn more in the Output View section.

Once you have finished defining the data mappings and data processing functions, MapForce autogenerates the software program code required to programmatically marshal data from the source to the target content model for use in your customized data integration and Web services applications. Program code can be generated in Java, C++, or C#.

Learn more in the Code Generation section.

Discover why MapForce® 2008 is the ultimate tool for data integration and Web services implementation. Download a free trial today!