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Options for XML Export

This page is available for XML output only.

Use Selection Criteria

This option differs slightly from the other options on this page, as it enables or skips the selection criteria wizard page. If you forget to click this option, you can always go back to this wizard page and select it afterward. It will not influence other choices on this page.

Preserve White Space

Selecting this checkbox sets the XML property pbPreserveWhiteSpace. The wizard will then attempt to not delete white space, but it cannot preserve white space exactly as it appeared in the original document. Instead, the object model replaces white space present in the original document with a single new line character in the representation returned. Similarly, this property contains a representation without the leading and trailing spaces and replaces multiple intervening white space characters between words with a single space character.

Export Field Attributes

For each written record, the field attributes of the field will be written. The attributes are:

  • DF_FIELD_NUMBER
  • DF_FIELD_TYPE
  • DF_FIELD_NATIVE_LENGTH
  • DF_FIELD_LENGTH
  • DF_FIELD_PRECISION

Export File Attributes

This option will cause the export of the file attributes as well as the data. This is done once per XML file in the first node. The following file attributes will be exported:

  • DF_FILE_DRIVER
  • DF_FILE_ROOT_NAME
  • DF_FILE_DISPLAY_NAME
  • DF_FILE_LOGICAL_NAME
  • DF_FILE_PHYSICAL_NAME
  • DF_FILE_OWNER
  • DF_FILE_RECORD_LENGTH
  • DF_FILE_RECORD_LENGTH_USED
  • DF_FILE_RECORDS_USED
  • DF_FILE_REVISION
  • DF_FILE_TRANSACTION
  • DF_FILE_COMPRESSION

For detailed information on the above referenced attributes, see Database API Attributes in the Language Reference Help book.

Use CDATA Elements

Data from a database may contain formatting information that XML parsers may misunderstand. When this option is true (default), the data is not written as normal element data but with a <![CDATA[ format. This makes it possible to have XML encoding data in the XML file within your data. Only "]]>" strings are not allowed inside this kind of element data.

Data Translation

This group allows you to specify whether the source data needs to be converted from OEM (ASCII) to ANSI, from ANSI to OEM, or if no conversion is needed at all. XML expects the data to be UNICODE but accepts ANSI. ASCII is often misinterpreted. Since most DataFlex data is in OEM format, the conversion from OEM to ANSI is the most likely choice.