Mapping reference

In addition to allowing you to map a source element to a target element by dragging and dropping, Data Interchange Services client includes a powerful set of mapping commands. This allows you to use conditional logic such as if/then/else, qualify repeating elements, save values in variables, create complex expressions, and many other functions.

This section describes the command language used in the Data Transformation Map editor to perform these tasks. When you create a map, you are basically creating a sequence of commands. Each command is attached to an object in the source or target document, such as a segment, data element, field, XML element, and so on. Whenever the translator finds an object in the source or target document, it executes any commands associated with it. You can also add commands before and after objects in the document. The translator executes these commands, even if the elements before and after are not found. You can create the commands by dragging and dropping a source element to a target element (or variable) or vice versa. This results in a MapTo (for source-based mapping) or ForEach (for target-based mapping) command or an assignment command being created. You can also create commands by right-clicking an element in the Mapping Command window, which opens the Mapping Command Editor.

The following sections provide examples of some of the supported commands and functions, as well as information about other important features of the mapping language.

Copyright IBM Corp. 2003, 2005