Setting field values to null from interface tables or flat files data sources

Content

This Fix Pack will provide support for setting field values to null from interface tables and flat files. Prior to 7.1.1.6 base services fix pack, the component that converts flat data (i.e. data from a flat file or interface table) to XML does not support setting a field value to null by providing an empty XML tag in the message.

This functional enhancement updates the referred component to recognize the input field value of ~NULL~ from the data source field and perform processing logic that will result in that field be updated to a null value in Maximo. With this IF change any field in a flat file or any non-numeric/non-date field in an interface table may be set to ~NULL~ and this will result in the corresponding business object field being set to null.

To do this, the inbound processing logic will create the appropriate tags with no value in the flat to XML conversion which will allow the IF to set the MBO field to null during processing.

Processing Considerations

There are 2 exceptions where this approach will not support the nulling of fields:

a) processing numeric fields from interface tables
b) processing date fields from interface tables.