XML Support

OpenROAD application and source components now can be exported to and imported from XML in UTF-8 or UTF-16 encoding. The XML file format:

• Produces clean differences between different revisions of a file

• Enables OpenROAD source components to be managed by a variety of Software Configuration Management (SCM) systems

You can use XML export as an alternative to the documentapp utility to provide consistently structured output that uses documented attribute and class names. Another advantage to exporting applications and components to XML is that exported data does not require storage internal to OpenROAD.

You can use outputted XML to perform bulk attribute changes for all or selected components and applications, re-importing the modified XML files when your changes are complete. Using the new system classes, you also can generate and parse arbitrary XML files, extending OpenROAD’s scripting capabilities.

OpenROAD applications and components can be created or edited outside of the Workbench IDE using third-party editors, OO-CASE/UML tools, Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) tools, and other XML processing technologies.

For more information about XML support, see the Language Reference Guide and the Workbench User Guide.

OpenROAD provides nine new classes for generating and parsing arbitrary XML files. No additional UserClasses or external classes are required. XML documents (URLs or files) are parsed into their tree-based object structure. The new system classes are:

Represents an attribute of an XML element—a name/value pair, which is part of an XML element start tag

Represents a CDATA section within an XML element. It is delimited by “<![CDATA[” and “]]>” tags in an XML document.

Represents a comment within an XML element. It is delimited by “” tags in an XML document.

Reads and creates XML documents. It provides methods to create and parse XML documents. This class can represent an XML document in a tree-like object structure in memory. Additional low-level methods are provided to write documents without populating this object structure.

Represents an XML element, which is delimited by its starting and ending tags in an XML document

Represents a processing instruction within an XML element. It is delimited by the “<?” and “?>” tags within an XML document and has a target name different from “xml.”

Provides methods for adding and removing schemas to the cache, which can be used to validate XML documents

For complete information about these XML system classes, their attributes, and methods, see the Language Reference Guide and the System Reference Summary.