Components
Components are the central elements of any mapping design in MapForce. Visually, components are represented as rectangular boxes in the mapping area. This topic gives an overview of structural and transformation components (see example below). The distinction is based on whether a component has a data structure or is used to transform data. See the description of these types in the subsections below. See also Mapping Fundamentals.
Components example
The sample mapping below illustrates two data source components (Books and Library), one data target component (MergedLibrary), and one transformation component (the current-dateTime function).
Structural components
Structural components represent an abstract structure of your data (e.g., an XML file). The list of structural components that can be used as data sources and targets is given in Structural Components. Structural components can read data from files or other sources, write data to files or other sources, and store data at some intermediary stage in the mapping process (e.g., to preview the data). The table below gives an overview of structural components and their respective toolbar buttons.
Icon | Description |
|---|---|
 | XML component |
 | Text component (Professional and Enterprise editions) |
 | Database component (Professional and Enterprise editions for SQL Databases; Enterprise Edition for NoSQL databases) |
 | JSON component (Enterprise Edition) |
 | Microsoft Excel component (Enterprise Edition) |
 | WSDL component (Enterprise Edition) |
 | EDI component (Enterprise Edition) |
 | XBRL component (Enterprise Edition) |
| Protocol Buffers (Enterprise Edition) |
Transformation components
Transformation components help you transform data, store an intermediate mapping result for further processing, replace a value by another value, sort, group, join, and filter your data. You can also add an exception, which stops the mapping process and displays an error when a condition defined by a filter occurs. The table below gives an overview of transformation components and their respective toolbar buttons.
Icon | Description |
|---|---|
 | Simple input |
 | Simple output |
 | Filter component |
 | Sort component |
 | Built-in function |
 | User-defined function |
 | SQL/NoSQL-WHERE/ORDER component (Professional and Enterprise editions) |
 | Value-Map component |
 | Variable |
 | Web service function (Enterprise Edition) |
 | Exception (Professional and Enterprise editions) |
 | Constant |
| If-Else Condition |
| Join component (Professional and Enterprise editions) |
In this section
This section gives an overview of components and is organized into the following topics: