Unlike X-Men, XMAN is not a fictitious super hero but its powers are amazing. As part of AIA Developer Tools, it allows you to introspect the mapping structure in complex XSL transformation and presents a user friendly report in HTML and CSV format. This empowers the functional and technical analysis of the code to resolve technical governance issues of consistency in attribute mappings and XREF/DVM usage.
Some of the Benefits are:
- Functional interoperability between PIPs.
- Jumpstart projects and encourages reuse by using existing mapping information.
- Enhances productivity by helping populate design time EBO mapping spreadsheets.
- Assist with PIP upgrades by identifying custom extensions.
Viewing the HTML report is useful for viewing one service at a time; however there are times when we need to see the attribute mappings across connectors to ensure semantic consistency or to ensure all related connectors are using same XREF and DVM. For this purpose, AIA allows to download the consolidated report in CSV format and you can follow the below steps to import it in MS Excel,
- Open a new Excel spreadsheet file.
- In the menu bar, select Data -> Get External Data -> From Text. (Text - to - columns in Excel 2003 and prior versions)
- 'Import text file' dialog box appears. Choose the csv file which you want to import.
- 'Text import Wizard' dialog box appears. Choose 'Delimited' option in the 'Original Data Type' selection. Click 'Next'.
- Select 'Other' check box and enter '~' in the text box. Click 'Next' and Click 'Finish'.
- Put appropriate column headers as following,
Custom, ServiceType, FileName, EBO, Application, Service, Operation, Source Xpath, DVM, XREF, Target Xpath, EBM, ABM
Now you may go about creating pivot tables and analyze DVM and XREF usage. One example to show the number of a particular XREF table usage in any service for a given application would be to create a pivot table and; select Service & Operation as "Report Filter", select Application as "Column Labels", select XREF as "Row Labels" and select ABM as "Values".
Similarly, you may analyze a specific attribute usage or DVM usage.
Look for XMAN at AIA Implementation Resources wiki
