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Data mapping in services and connectors — Concepts and termsPRPC uses the term data mapping for the task of converting data received from, or sent to, an outside source or system into the formats, values, and objects needed within an application.
Most system interfaces, known as connectors and services, require data mapping in both directions, for the request and the response.
Typically the source (of outgoing data) and the destination (of incoming data) is a property on a clipboard page. For a developer, establishing the relationships among the external formats and structures and internal formats and structures can be laborious, exacting, and tedious. When dealing with legacy external systems, differences in character sets, the endian orientation of binary values, the representation of numbers and dates or times, and so on add to the complexity of data mapping.
For more information about data mapping of SOAP messages, see Data Mapping XML, a document available from in the Integration area of the PDN.
PRPC offers several features that can simplify and speed this development task, including:
- Eleven property modes and eleven Type values, accommodating needs for dates, times, numbers, and aggregates — arrays or repeating groups.
- A flexible and powerful multilevel clipboard structure that supports embedded pages many levels deep.
- A guided process for the development of connectors and conversion of WSDL files, database schema, and XML schema. See Using the Connector and Metadata Accelerator.
- Direct execution of SQL statements, including stored procedures, through Connect SQL rules.
- Automatic parsing of XML in arriving XML documents. See About Parse XML rules.
- Automatic parsing of HTTP Post messages (sometimes called Common Gateway Interface query strings).
- Data conversion routines provided by Edit Input rules. See About Edit Input rules.
- Two parse rule for converting fixed-format records or string values into distinct property values. For simple cases, see About Map Structured rules. For more complex cases, see About Parse Structured rules.
- A similar parse rule for converting tab-delimited input files into individual properties. See About Service File rules and About Parse Delimited rules.
- Extensible libraries of functions for mapping, one each for inbound mapping (the MapTo library) and outbound mapping (the MapFrom library)
