[DFDL-WG] Info on BEAs Format Builder - Java GUI to convert binaryto/from XML

[Mike Beckerle]

Every major vendor of enterprise software has at least one, and likely ½
dozen tools that deal with binary/text file formats. The goal of DFDL is to
reduce the redundant effort in creating and maintaining these tools, and to
encourage cross-vendor compatibility with these format specifications, which
are quite hard to create and to debug/maintain. 

 

BEA is particularly big on “converting” binary data to XML, which to me
mostly makes sense logically, but physically is awfully inefficient. 

 


mike

Mike Beckerle | OGF DFDL WG Co-Chair | CTO | Oco, Inc.
Tel:  781-810-2100  | 504 Totten Pond Road, Waltham MA 02451 |
<mailto:mbeckerle.dfdl at gmail.com> mbeckerle.dfdl at gmail.com 

  _____  

From: dfdl-wg-bounces at ogf.org [mailto:dfdl-wg-bounces at ogf.org] On Behalf Of
RPost
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 8:18 PM
To: dfdl-wg at ogf.org
Subject: [DFDL-WG] Info on BEAs Format Builder - Java GUI to convert
binaryto/from XML

 

Hi,

 

Open mouth – insert foot. At my current contract site I happened to mention
to some people that BEA has a Format Builder app that can convert binary
to/from XML. Seems they had a team of people halfway through a project
writing custom Java code to read Mainframe files (mostly copybook) and load
the data into Oracle but hadn’t known that the BEA Integration suite they
had been using for years already had that functionality.

 

Reminds me of my favorite definition: Contractor – someone who borrows your
watch to tell you what time it is.

 

I had assumed you all were aware of BEAs Format Builder but figured I would
pass the info on anyway.

 

1. From the BEA docs page: http://e-docs.bea.com/

 

2. Select BEA WebLogic Integration under the BEA WebLogic section
(http://e-docs.bea.com/wli/docs102/index.html)

 

3. Select ‘Using Format Builder’ under the Data Transformation section
(http://e-docs.bea.com/wli/docs102/fbhelp/index.html).

    You can select ‘view as PDF’ to save a local copy.

 

There is also a tutorial on creating a WebLogic Integration Process to
extract mainframe data (cobol copybook) and inserting

the data into an Oracle database:
http://www.dev2dev.co.kr/pub/a/2004/06/Bukhari_WLIProcess.jsp

 

If you download the author’s files
(http://ftpna2.bea.com/pub/downloads/WLIProcess_Bukhari.zip) the zip file
will have

the copybook format (employee.cpy) and the BEA MFL (message format language)
file (Employee.mfl) which shows

how the cobol format was mapped to the schema file.

 

The zip also contains various *.java files that show the bean files that
were created.

 

The ‘Mainframe Data Extraction’ doc in the zip file contains the tutorial
text and diagrams as a Word document.

 

The Format Builder GUI lets you build the XML tree graphically and can
launch a test GUI that lets you test the conversion in both directions.

 

The BEA Integration Suite is available for free evaluation (as is all of
Oracle’s products) on the Oracle edelivery site at
http://edelivery.oracle.com/ if anyone is interested in trying the tool.

 

I can also email some screenshots if there is any interest. 

 

 

Rick

 

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