ServingXML should run on any platform with a Java Virtual Machine version 1.5 or higher. Users have reported running various versions of the software on Windows NT/2000/XP, Linux, and Solaris.

Yes, ServingXML is Apache 2 licensed, which permits free commercial use of the software.

Yes, ServingXML can read COBOL packed-decimal values and render them as numeric strings, and read numeric strings and render them as packed-decimal values.

Yes, ServingXML can read binary fields and render them as hexadecimal strings, and read hexadecimal strings and render them as binary values.

Yes, ServingXML can read

Yes. Flat-to-XML mappings are done one record at a time, and XML-to-flat mappings take a streaming approach to minimize the amount of data held in memory at any one time. Current users are processing flat files with hundreds of thousands of records without a problem.

Yes. All XPATH expressions and XSLT stylesheets referred to in ServingXML pipelines are evaluated using the configured JAXP XSLT transformer. By default, the ServingXML console application uses Saxon-B 9, which implements XSLT 2.0 It is possible to configure ServingXML to use a different transformer, even an older XSLT 1.0 tranformer such as Saxon 6.5.

  java -jar servingxml.jar -i input.csv -o output.xml -r resources.xml myService price=3.0 price=2.0 price=4.0

Yes. Use a URI obtained by concatenating the namespace URI and the local name of the content defined in the resources script. If the ServingXML content requires parameters, append the "?" character to the URI, followed by name=value entries separated by a ";" or an escaped ampersand character (&).

Change the default default indent output property in the servingxml.xml configuration file.

<sx:xsltConfiguration version="1.0" ...
 
  <sx:outputProperty name="indent" value="yes"/>  

Or, use the sx:outputProperty element inside a sx:xsltSerializer to override the default indent output property of the XSLT serializer.

  <sx:serialize ...  

    <sx:xsltSerializer>
      <sx:outputProperty name="indent" value="yes"/>
    </sx:xsltSerializer>

Use the sx:outputProperty element inside a sx:xsltSerializer to set the encoding output property of the XSLT serializer, e.g.

  <sx:serialize ...
  
    <sx:xsltSerializer>
      <sx:outputProperty name="encoding" value="ISO-8859-1"/>
    </sx:xsltSerializer>

Give the value as a two-part string, the namespace URI enclosed in curly braces ({}), followed by the local name.

  <sx:serialize ...

    <sx:xsltSerializer>
      <sx:outputProperty name="cdata-section-elements" value="{namespaceUrl}tag"/>
    </sx:xsltSerializer>

Use sx:choose in the record mapping section.

<sx:recordMapping id="countriesToXmlMapping">
  <countries xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <sx:onRecord>
      <country>
        <sx:choose>
          <sx:when test="code = ''">
            <countryCode xsi:nil="true"/>
          </sx:when>
          <sx:otherwise>
            <sx:fieldElementMap field="code" element="countryCode"/>
          </sx:otherwise>
        </sx:choose>

ServingXML versions 0.8.x, which minimally require Java 5, need servingxml.jar and a conforming XSLT implementation (the versions of Xalan currently shipping with Java 5.x and 6.x will not work, because of bugs in these versions.) Earlier ServingXML versions, which minimally require Java 1.4, need additional jar files, including concurrent.jar, xml-apis.jar, and xercesImpl.jar. Extensions such as Fop need more jar files.

Pass it through the parameters. In the application code, add it to the parameters before executing a service.

  ApplicationContext appContext ...

  ParameterBuilder paramBuilder = new ParameterBuilder();
  Name contextName = new QualifiedName("appContext");
  paramBuilder.setObject(contextName, appContext);
  Record parameters = paramBuilder.toRecord();
  
  Flow flow = new FlowImpl(parameters, defaultStreamSource, defaultStreamSink);

  service.execute(context, flow);

In the custom record filter, access the ApplicationContext object from the parameters.

public class MyRecordFilter extends AbstractRecordFilter
implements RecordFilter  {
  private static final Name contextName = new QualifiedName("appContext");
  private ApplicationContext  appContext;
  
  public void startRecordStream(ServiceContext context, Flow flow) {
    super.startRecordStream(context, flow);
    this.appContext = (ApplicationContext)parameters.getObject(contextName);
  }

Yes, by passing a StringStreamSource when creating a Flow,

 
  import com.servingxml.io.streamsource.StreamSource;
  import com.servingxml.io.streamsource.StringStreamSource;

  ..

  StreamSource streamSource = new StringStreamSource(str);

  Flow flow = new FlowImpl(parameters, streamSource, streamSink);

Yes, using the createIocContainer method that takes an InputStream,

 
 IocContainerFactory iocContainerFactory = new IocContainerFactory();
 iocContainerFactory.loadComponentDefinitions();

 InputStream is; 
 //Initialize input stream
 
 IocContainer resources =
    iocContainerFactory.createIocContainer(is, parameters);

Yes, using the createIocContainer method that takes a Reader,

 
  import java.io.Reader;
  import java.io.StringReader;

  IocContainerFactory iocContainerFactory = new IocContainerFactory();
  iocContainerFactory.loadComponentDefinitions();

  Reader reader = new StringReader(str); 
 
  IocContainer resources =
    iocContainerFactory.createIocContainer(reader, parameters);

Use a StringStreamSink,

 
import com.servingxml.io.streamsink.StringStreamSink;

...

StreamSink streamSink = new StringStreamSink(); 
Flow flow =  new FlowImpl(parameters, streamSource, streamSink);

 ...
 
String s = streamSink.toString(); 

This error message means that your version of the Java Development Kit (JDK) does not support generics, which were introduced in Java 1.5. ServingXML versions beginning with 0.8.0 require a JDK version 1.5 or later. See the Getting Started guide for instructions on installing a recent JDK. If you've followed the instructions, and you type

echo %JAVA_HOME% 

you should see something like

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_11 

Later versions are fine.

CharSequence was new to Java 1.4, so it looks like your Java Runtime Environment (JRE) predates 1.4. ServingXML versions before 0.8.0 require Java runtime 1.4 or later; subsequent versions require Java runtime 1.5 or later. See the Getting Started guide for instructions on installing a recent JRE. If you've followed the instructions, and you type

java -version 

you should see something like

java version "1.5.0_11"  

Later versions are fine.