Deploying data mappings created in MapForce and report designs created in StyleVision for automated processing by Altova server products is straightforward and quick.
The File menu in MapForce includes two options to optimize, preprocess, and deploy data mappings for MapForce Server and FlowForce Server. Preprocessing enables faster performance and reduced memory footprint for most data mappings.
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Rapid response to user input is critical to the success of any Web application. FlowForce Server administrators can leverage result caching, a new feature introduced in version 2014, to deliver nearly instantaneous results to users running FlowForce Server jobs in a browser window as HTTP services.
Configuring a FlowForce Server job to take advantage of result caching is a simple two-step process. As an example, let’s look at the job we created recently in FlowForce Server Jobs as HTTP Services. We defined a StyleVision Server transformation as the last step in a FlowForce Server job and made the job available as an HTTP service that delivered the HTML result to a Web browser window. Read more…
FlowForce Server administrators can define jobs as HTTP services to empower end users to execute the job on demand, as easily as opening a Web page.
When a FlowForce Server job runs as an HTTP service results are delivered back to the Web browser. If the last step is a StyleVision Server transformation, the job can create a rich HTML-based Web page.
Even better, the same result is simultaneously saved in the enterprise workflow.
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In our earlier posts on FlowForce Server, we described jobs that execute MapForce Server for data transformations, StyleVision Server for report and document rendering, and RaptorXML Server for XML processing. In each scenario we also used built-in system functions to copy move, or delete files, as is often required in real-world workflows.
In this post we’ll take a look at more of the built-in functions automatically installed in the FlowForce Server system container. You can use these commands as execution steps to automate the file housekeeping so often required in enterprise production.
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Whenever you accept data from an outside source you risk encountering errors. We have blogged about this phenomenon in the past in Expect the Unexpected – Altova MissionKit Solves a Number Format Mystery and in the series of posts on Processing the Groupon API.
Bad data in an input file can cause the data transformation step of a FlowForce Server job to fail. When a FlowForce Server Job fails, further execution steps will not be performed. FlowForce Server is designed this way to prevent an error in one job step from cascading into a series of additional invalid results. Happily, FlowForce Server also includes features to help you recover from errors and keep production flowing.
In this post we will further extend the data mapping and report rendering job described in Customizing a FlowForce Server Job to gracefully handle bad data in an input file.
Altova will be exhibiting in New Orleans, LA from June 3-6 at Microsoft TechEd in booth #429. Come on down to the Morial Convention Center and speak with our experts about our new line of cross-platform server software products: FlowForce Server, MapForce Server and StyleVision Server. 
If you are attending TechEd, stop by our booth to see first-hand how these new products offer high-speed automation for projects designed using familiar Altova MissionKit developer tools. While you are at our booth mention this blog post to receive a special giveaway. We can’t wait to see you next week in New Orleans!
In our earlier post titled Automate Data Mapping and Transformation with FlowForce Server, we created a job called SimpleMapAndTransform to automate data mapping with MapForce Server and creation of html reports by StyleVision Server. After the FlowForce Server job ran several times, we have accumulated many output files in the same folder we use to process input files, as well as temporary intermediate files in the workFiles folder, as seen in the image below.
In this post we will enhance the job to create more orderly results and remove unneeded temporary files.
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