Newsletter Purpose:This is the periodic newsletter of Zetein Inc. offering insights into current standards and technology topics. This letter also serves as a means of staying in touch with you. Here are the major topics covered this edition:
Items of general interest Technical topics Blatant AdvertisementOne of the advantages of using standards is that it gives a company options. The standard one hears the most about in the press and from the company technical community is XML. XML is a representation of information including identifying tags that describe each data item.
If you examine most company administrative systems, there are only a few interface points to other systems or to the outside world. New Business, Policy Service, Accounting, Agency, Actuarial, Billing and external reporting would cover most interfaces. If a company commits to use a standard interface using XML (like the ACORD or IAA standard) between each of the above interface points, the company can change either side of the interface with minimal or no changes to the other. You could switch from one billing system to another without changing the generating administrative system.
Since most companies have many administrative systems, an interface standard gives the company flexibility in choosing the best back end system available and using it for all administrative systems. Conversely, a change in one of the administrative systems will not necessitate on the back end system.
The flexibility comes in two ways. First, as these standards are more widely accepted, many new systems are able to accept feeds in the standard format. Most vendors are, or will soon, beginning to support standard feeds. Your company will soon have the flexibility of choosing a new system based on the needs of your company and not have to worry about the difficulty of integration.
Second, if you happen to choose IAA as your standard and the system that meets your need uses the ACORD standard, a simple XSLT transform can be written to change the interface format from IAA to ACORD. The easy transformation of formats is a very good feature of XML.
If you would like me to discuss this topic in more depth or other topics in future newsletters, please let me know.
There are three predominant tools for processing XML documents XSL (XSLT), SAX, and DOM. While other technologies exist, we are only going to explore these three. They encompass most of the applications implemented today.
Use XSL or its little brother XSLT to transform one XML format into another. XSL works somewhat like a 4GL computer language. In the XSL, you specify certain trigger conditions. If those trigger conditions are met, the associated transform occurs.
Such a high level paradigm makes XSL extremely useful when transforming from one format to another. In the business example above, we described transforming from IAA to ACORD. This is a very real use of XSL. The triggers would be that when you have a certain IAA aggregate then the resulting action would create the appropriate ACORD aggregate.
XSL is used on websites to convert XML input data into displayable data. XSL will generate non XML interfaces like outputting a flat file.
SAX, and DOM can also be used to transform data but, are generally used when more processing is required. SAX, and DOM are used inside a program that someone in your company or a vendor like Zetein writes. SAX, and DOM are just two different ways to process an XML data stream provided by most parsers. We will discuss various parsers in a future newsletter. Just know that a parser is a program that does the technical reading of the XML DataStream and provides ways to process the DataStream.
The difference between Sax and DOM is very basic. Using SAX, each XML element is passed into your program to do what you want to do with it. Using DOM, the parser builds a Document (more correctly, an object named a document), then, your program processes through the document as needed.
Given these differences, there are times when SAX is more appropriate. When processing very large XML DataStreams, SAX (since it does not store the whole document) is usually more efficient. Since many front end systems do not know how large an input DataStream might be, SAX works well in front end processors.
If the sequence of input is important, SAX is the way to process. There is no output method for SAX.
SOM is more appropriate when you have to traverse the information more than one time. Since information is stored in a document, you can read and reread a item as often as necessary. Since all information is stored, most parsers provide a method of outputting a DOM document into XML. So you can receive input (into a document), make changes to the document and then output the document in XML format if needed. This model works well in a request and response transaction. One caution, in DOM, the sequence of peer objects is not maintained. In fact different parsers return items in different sequences. If sequence is important, use SAX.
We will look at the “how to” of the various models in future newsletters.
If you would like me to discuss this topic in more depth or other topics in future newsletters, please let me know.
If any of the above topics piqued your interest, please contact us. Zetein is experienced, qualified and capable help in all of the following areas of specialty:
John Meagher, principal, has extensive experience in insurance and ACORD standards. Take a look at John's Resume.
Visit our website (http://www.zeteininc.com/)for more details, then please call (469.374.0984) or email (jmeagher@zeteininc.com) me to explore how I can help with your ACORD project.
Thanks, John Meagher
Zetein Inc BX 741083 Dallas TX 75374
If you do not wish any future emails, please reply to this email with “Remove” in the subject line.