Manipulating the fields when using .net DTS

cguelain posted this 14 April 2015

Hi,

we're currently using docentric in a .net project. Our last experience with your awesome product was with xsd datasources and it ran swimmingly (including manipulating the values of the fields with xpath - for instance using the first item in a collection or a substring for a data field). Now we've decided to step up our game using DTS to improve maintenability and we can't figure how to do the same kind of basic manipulation, the developer told me maybe we could do it with Linq queries but I'm lost for words. Any pointers ?

cheers

.net

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jles posted this 15 April 2015

Hi,

Thanks for posting the question in the forum. Would you mind explaining what do you mean by "improving maintenability" and why do you think DTS data sources would help you here?

XML brings best flexibility compared to .NET and DTS data sources. In fact other two flavors do not enable any kind of in-template scripting such as XPath. So if you need this kind of flexibility (scripting, functions), then I strongly suggest that you stay with XML. It might happen that we will add scripting for DTS and .NET object data source as well but there is no telling when this will happen.

You should also know that we are preparing some new features in version 2.3, such as Preview and Friendly Names/Descriptions and these will be in the next version (2.3) only be available for templates with XML data source.

In other words, XML has proved to be a good choice for data source, it has many good characteristics and we see a lot of our customers chose to go with it. This is also why we see it as a first class citizen and in the future it will probably be the first of the three flavors that will enjoy new features.

Let me know if this helps you.

Best regards, Jure Leskovec

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cguelain posted this 15 April 2015

Thank you for your quick answer which answered perfectly my point.

The thing about maintainability is that while our dll can be populated automatically, the entries in the xsd need to be be manually updated whenever the datas change. We used xsd/xml for our previous project and hoped we'd get the same level of inline customization with .net. Since you're going the xml way I guess we'll follow you there.

I've discussed the subject quickly with the lead developper and he's planning to program a function aimed at populating both the xsd and the subsequent xml to match complex objects wo adding them one at a time.

Also good to know you'll implement soon previews, it will prove quite useful.

Cheers,

Clément Guélain

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jles posted this 15 April 2015

Clement,

Are you saying that you have been writting XSDs by hand? This process can be fully automated in a generic way. There is already one such generator in the "Example Browser" app written by us which generates XSD and XMLs from plain data sets. I think you can modify it with a little effort in order to create a .NET -> XSD converter. And note that you can also hire us to do it for you.

If you would like, you can get the version 2.3 to try it out. The preview feature already is fully functional and stable. If you are interested in this (non-public) release, please let us know by emailing us to support at docentric.com.

-- Jure

Manipulating the fields when using .net DTS

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