What are the benefits of using ParseAce©?

Whenever you need to have a look at structured contents of a file or a message, ParseAce© can make your life much easier and save you a lot of time.

Data structures can be quite complex - the sequence of fields, their lengths and meanings are usually not something that you could always remember from the top of your head. To make things even harder, data structures in the same input often change depending on the value in one of the fields.

With any generally available editor (text or hexadecimal), you can only see a long sequence of values without any separators or field identifiers. Finding the value of a specific field usually means that you have to count the bytes from the beginning and follow the specification at the same time. This process can take a lot of your time and energy.

ParseAce© is aware of your structure, because it is clearly described in an XML file that you select in the beginning. In this way, checking your structured contents is really easy. Different fields with their values are clearly separated and presented with different background colours. Even corresponding field names show up when we point the mouse to the presented field values.

If you are dealing with several different data structures, ParseAce© is most likely the only tool you will need to check the contents in any of them. The number of different structures that can be parsed is not limited as long as you have the corresponding structure definition files (XML files).

What is the syntax in the XML structure definition files?

You can define one or more data structures in one XML file.

If all of the records (or messages) have the same structure, you only define one structure node and its subordinate container nodes (fields).

If several different data structures are expected from the same input, we first have to define the starting position of the Structure IDentification field (SID). This starting position (not the length) has to be the same in all of the records (or messages). Then every structure node is associated with a different SID value - the value which identifies that a specific structure definition has to be used for parsing.

Defined structure nodes usually have several subordinate container nodes (fields). Basically, every field (container node) has a length, a descriptive field name and an RGB background colour parameters.

Additionally, descriptive meanings and specific value-dependent background colours can be assigned to different values of the field.

Besides fixed length fields, variable length fields and delimited fields can also be defined.

Several XML structure definition files and corresponding input files are included as examples in the installation package.

XML syntax is explained more in detail in the manual that you receive together with ParseAce© license.

What is the cost of the license?

We are a new start-up company, just starting the business. By being one of our first customers, you can have the benefit of the promotional license price.

Please contact us for more details at ParseAce@siol.com

How can I be sure that ParseAce© has the necessary functionality for processing my data structures?

If you are not sure that ParseAce© is the right tool for your needs and if you do not mind sending us your structure specification, please mail it to us (to ParseAce@siol.com). If possible, together with a test input file.

In this way, we could evaluate your needs and provide you with an honest reply.

As much as feasible, we could even help by offering you support with the preparation of the corresponding structure definition XML files.