Assembly Editor

Use the Assembly Editor to create an assembly.

Each XML stage that you add to a job requires an assembly. An assembly defines a series of steps that parse, compose, and transform hierarchical data.

The Assembly Editor has three panes: the Assembly Outline, the Step pane, and the step Input/step Output pane. The Assembly Outline lists the names of the assembly steps in the order in which they are performed.

To add a step to the assembly, you click the Palette button. Then you drag a step from the palette to the location in the assembly where you want that step to be performed or double-click a step to add it below the currently selected step in the assembly. Steps are available for a variety of transformations, including sorting, aggregating, joining, and pivoting.

When you click the name of a step in the Assembly Outline, the step displays in the Step pane. Each step has three tabs: Configuration, Information, and Test Data. The Configuration tab always contains mandatory fields that you must complete to configure the step. The step Information tab is similar to the assembly Overview; it displays creation and modification information, as well as optional fields that you can use to document the name and purpose of the step. You use the Test Data tab when you test the assembly. Testing is optional but extremely useful. By testing, you can see the incremental change that each step makes. You can evaluate how the step transformations affect the data and confirm that the assembly is performing exactly the transformation that you want.

As you configure each step in the assembly, the Assembly Editor monitors your work and maintains a running total of the issues that you need to address. An issue is not necessarily an error. In many cases, an issue describes a specific field that requires input or a item that requires mapping. To see all of the issues in the assembly, click View All. The issues display, sorted by step. For each step, a handy link is available, so that you can quickly jump to the step and start addressing the issues. The issues are also displayed on the Configuration tab of the step that has issues.

The step Input/step Output pane displays the step input and the step output as schema trees. The step Input is the result of the enrichments and transformations that were made by all of the previous steps in the assembly. The step Output describes the output of the current step. For example, if the step adds a new node to the data structure, the step Output highlights the new node. Within the assembly, the output of one step is always the input for the next step in the outline.

On the Output step, you can right-click on an item to display a menu of actions that you can perform on that step. You can rename items so that they have more meaningful names, delete unnecessary sub-trees, and perform other modifications.