Automating the XML conversion and XSL formatting of textual legacy data

摘要

XML technology supports multichannel publishing of data.Migration from legacy workflows to the use of XML technology requires not only the data to be converted to XML,the formatting processes need to be reimplemented,too.We address the problem of converting legacy data together with their formatting specifications to XML and XML stylesheets.We discuss a case study,based on simplified line-based data from a real production environment.We introduce a prototype architecture to automate the conversion and formatting of such data,based on its legacy formatting specifications.The prototype was implemented using freely available XML tools and a declarative XML conversion language called XW.The simplicity of XW makes it possible to control the somewhat complex processes by three relatively simple scripts.