The XML File can be passed as a KEYS argument to the ITP RUNMDL API. When a main entry is called it will open and read the XML file name from the KEYS list. If the list is empty the evaluator will prompt the user via a standard file selector to select an appropriate XML file. In this way, one can dynamically change the input XML file for each model run.
All other settings are specified in the connection configuration file. The name and location of the connection configuration file is specified at the setting ITPDMINIFILE= in the ITP configuration file. You can set or change this setting with the ITP Administration Program. The value of this setting is the name of a file. The connection configuration file is called the DataManager ini file or Dm.ini file. You can change the contents of the Dm.ini file with the ITP Administration Program by selecting Connection configuration.
With the setting Directory you can specify the default directory where ITP will start looking for XML files. This is both the starting point of the file selector as the root of a relative path passed as KEY (absolute path may also be given)
Note
We do not limit file access in any way. If this is necessary, this has to be done via the standard ways for setting file authorizations.
Normally the XML File connection complains about fields that are defined in the DID, but are not present in the XML record. The main reason to do so is to avoid errors. It is less error-prone to explicitly incorporate empty fields in an XML file, than allowing them to be absent, as this increases the risk that a field gets ignored just because one has used the wrong tag name in the DID. If you set the AllowMissingFields option, ITP ignores fields that have been specified in the DID but do not occur in the selected XML file. Use the special DATABASE_FIELD specification *PRESENT to make a distinction in a model between missing elements and elements that are present in the XML file, but empty.
The XML File connection will resolve namespace prefixes from tags and attributes and validate them against the namespace declarations in the active scope. This support is required to be able to match fields and entries based on namespaces. If this option is disabled namespace prefixes are ignored and considered to be part of the xml tag.
The format of numerical data that is stored in the XML file may vary for different countries. Several settings in the datamanager ini file allow you to determine the layout of the thousand separator and the decimal point.
By default, XML files use an UTF-8 encoding. If another encoding is used, the file should normally contain a prolog that specifies this encoding. The XML File connection however, allows a default encoding to be specified via an XMLFile.Encoding.Default setting. In this way files without a prolog can use a encoding different than UTF-8. Note that such a file may not be readable by ordinary XML processors, so this setting must be used with care.