data conversion Archives

Tag Archive for: data conversion

How to Create a Chained Data Transformation

July 5, 2023/in Data Integration, Tools /by Erin Cavanaugh

Data mapping plays a vital role in modern data-driven organizations, enabling efficient data management and integration. Altova MapForce is a powerful, graphical data mapping tool that supports endless data transformation scenarios, including one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and chained data conversion.

While there are applications for each of these approaches, chained data mapping is especially helpful for complex data processing tasks where multiple stages of data manipulation are required. Here’s a look at the benefits of a chained data conversion approach – and a video of how MapForce makes the process easy and straightforward.

Decorative image: three business people working on laptops

How to Convert Data in MapForce [Video]

June 6, 2023/in Data Integration, Software, Tools /by Erin Cavanaugh

Altova MapForce offers a powerful, yet easy-to-use, approach to converting and transforming data. Whether you need to write XML to a database, convert JSON to EDI, or map Excel to multiple different data formats, MapForce has you covered.

From simple one-to-one conversions to complex ETL scenarios, the MapForce approach is to represent data structures as graphical components. To associate fields, drag and drop connecting lines. A comprehensive library of data filters and functions is available for transforming data before writing it to the target.

Decorative image showing a person working on a laptop with data formats supported by Altova MapForce in the background

We have recently revamped our series of Introduction to MapForce videos. Each short how-to gives a demo of a common MapForce scenario.

Start at the beginning to learn how MapForce works:

And follow along to learn:

An overview of MapForce features and functionality
How data transformation works
XML to XML transformation
Database to XML mapping (including filters and querying the database)
Mapping XML to databases (including database table actions)
One-to-many data integration (featuring Excel to JSON and XML and value-map functions)
Chained data transformation (including if-else conditions and data sorting functions)

You can follow along with the examples in these how-to videos by downloading a free, 30-day trial of MapForce. Check back for new MapForce videos, which are added often.

Tags: data conversion, data integration, data mapping, data transformation, demo videos, ETL, MapForce, videos

Automatically Convert EDI to XML

May 18, 2022/in Data Integration, EDI, Tools /by David McGahey

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has proven to be a durable business-to-business communication technology in use today with history dating to the 1960s and even earlier. Efficient EDI data encoding reduced transaction payload size and improved data transfer speeds at a time when messages were sent over teletype at speeds equivalent to a 300 baud modem. EDI standards bodies promote wide acceptance among enterprises, and systematic evolution of new EDI formats extends support across industries. EDI improves profitability and is a dominant format for e-commerce data exchange.

Despite the advantages, EDI files are barely human readable and need to be translated and mapped for compatibility with other business technologies. Altova MapForce is a graphical EDI mapping tool with native support for all major business data formats in use today, including XML, JSON, databases, flat files, Excel, and Web services, as well as the EDIFACT, X12, HL7, NCPDP SCRIPT, IDoc, PADIS, and SWIFT EDI transaction sets. MapForce can even automatically convert EDI to XML without the need to specify a target XML Schema or perform any manual mapping.

Data Mapping NoSQL Databases

November 26, 2021/in Database, Database mapping, JSON /by David McGahey

NoSQL databases are non-tabular databases that store data differently than traditional databases made up of relational tables. Two of the most popular NoSQL databases, MongoDB and Apache CouchDB, store data as collections of BSON (binary JSON) and JSON documents. These databases leverage flexible JSON schemas and scale easily with large amounts of data and high user loads.

Altova MapForce has long supported data mapping all popular relational databases and now also includes native support for data mapping NoSQL databases. MapForce includes functionality for inserting, extracting, filtering, and ordering NoSQL data. Let’s look at an example.