The present invention relates to data processing by digital computer, and more particularly to a user interface (UI) for defining a text file transformation.
Organizations today are realizing substantial business efficiencies in the development of data intense, connected, software applications, which provide seamless access to database systems within large corporations, as well as externally linking business partners and customers alike. Such distributed and integrated data systems are a necessary requirement for realizing and benefiting from automated business processes, yet this goal has proven to be elusive in real world deployments for a number of reasons, including the myriad of different database systems and programming languages involved in integrating today's enterprise back-end systems
Internet technologies in particular have given organizations an ability to share information in real-time with customers, partners, and internal business units. These entities, however, often store and exchange data in dissimilar formats, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), databases, and legacy Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems. Long before EDI and XML applications became commonplace, text files have been used as a way to exchange data between applications and computer systems. Today, businesses employ legacy software that can no longer be modified, but produces useful output in the form of text files or requires input in such form. Integrating these legacy applications into a modern computing environment can be challenging. The structure of flat files and text documents varies from application to application, making processing and integrating legacy data with other structured data formats difficult. Often these files may be produced by reporting tools and contain formatting that makes data reuse difficult, without extracting relevant portions of data. At other times, it may no longer be possible to update the software that processes such legacy files, and hence even newer software must produce files in the old legacy format.