How does it work?

The main two steps of using ParseAce© are selecting the XML file that contains corresponding structure definition and selecting the input data file.

Used file names and locations can be named and saved as configuration templates, to minimize the required effort when running similarly configured tasks in the future.

When you do not want all of the records (or messages) to be parsed, you can explicitly specify the Record presentation interval(s) - a list of record numbers or ranges of record numbers that you actually need and want to see in the output file.

The result of parsing is a HTML output file, in which you can see the fields with their actual values clearly separated and displayed with different background colours. Defined field names show up as soon as the mouse pointer is positioned to hover over displayed fields. Additionally, you can assign value-dependent meaning descriptors and specific background colours to different possible field values.

Data structures are clearly described in the corresponding structure definition XML files. Their contents are simple to understand and maintain in spite of their capability of describing complex data structures with many different data elements and formats.

Many times we can find several differently structured records in the same file (header, detail, trailer...) or differently structured messages in the same message exchange sequence (sign-on, transaction request, response, sign-off...). In such circumstances, parsing of different data structures from the same input has to be somehow defined and supported. In ParseAce©, this is achieved by linking data structure definitions with the corresponding structure identifiers (SIDs) - values which are located on a predefined known position in all of the records or in all of the messages.

Field values in the output HTML file can be formatted and presented in several ways: without any conversion (as ASCII characters), converted to hexa-decimal format, to binary format or to decimal number equivalents of binary field values.

Parsing fixed length fields as well as variable length fields is supported. Fixed field lengths are obtained from XML field definitions, while variable fields can get their actual lengths at run time, from input data - from the preceding length subfields.

Delimited fields are also supported with arbitrary delimiter lengths and values. Delimiters are not restricted to ASCII characters and can be defined in hexadecimal format.

Groups of randomly ordered delimited fields with tag field identifiers are also supported. Like delimiters, tags can also have arbitrary lengths and values (not necessarily ASCII).

ParseAce© was developed with non-ASCII (binary) contents in mind. This means that it can successfully parse data structures with binary contents, which can be presented in a user-friendly readable form.

To avoid any ASCII text processing limitations, records in input data files do not need to end with <CR><LF> control characters. You can define your own end-of-record idetifiers or even choose not to use them at all.