I'm currently struggling with the job where outbound wsdl is changed a lot (adding/removing fields, changing it's names and letter case). Could you please suggest me a good approach to avoid losing whole mapping when uploading new outbound structure to tXMLMap? It contains a lot of string and date/time format modifications and the structure is quite big so it takes a lot of time.
First of all I would suggest requesting that the WSDL doesn't change all of the time......but I know that isn't always possible 🙂
Other than that the only way of managing this without destroying your tXMLMap structure each time is to break the rules a little. But BE CAREFUL this can lead to trouble.
Talend job configurations are essentially stored in XML files. In your workspace you have .item files, .properties files and .screenshot files. You are interested in the .item files. In these files, the complete configuration of the job is stored. If you look for your tXMLMap component in this file, you will find a section in the XML where it is described. You will also see the schema here. It is possible to modify the schema (add elements, change the order, etc) without breaking the job BUT it is VERY dangerous and is NOT SUPPORTED.
I recommend that if you are going to try this, that you copy your entire workspace folder as a backup first and maybe even create a test job to try this out in first. Once you have mastered it, try it in the job you want to fix.
As I said, this is NOT SUPPORTED and can lead to problems if you make a mistake. But it does work.
First of all I would suggest requesting that the WSDL doesn't change all of the time......but I know that isn't always possible 🙂
Other than that the only way of managing this without destroying your tXMLMap structure each time is to break the rules a little. But BE CAREFUL this can lead to trouble.
Talend job configurations are essentially stored in XML files. In your workspace you have .item files, .properties files and .screenshot files. You are interested in the .item files. In these files, the complete configuration of the job is stored. If you look for your tXMLMap component in this file, you will find a section in the XML where it is described. You will also see the schema here. It is possible to modify the schema (add elements, change the order, etc) without breaking the job BUT it is VERY dangerous and is NOT SUPPORTED.
I recommend that if you are going to try this, that you copy your entire workspace folder as a backup first and maybe even create a test job to try this out in first. Once you have mastered it, try it in the job you want to fix.
As I said, this is NOT SUPPORTED and can lead to problems if you make a mistake. But it does work.
While what rhall suggests would work I'll echo his warning that you really should not do that. You can very easily get a job into a state where the studio will no longer be able to edit the job correctly. Also, in principle, editing the items files by hand is a very big no no. You should avoid doing this except in cases where you need to recover corrupted jobs.
An alternative solution, while not pretty or perfect, would be to convert the XML to string and then run a series of regex replace functions to "fix" the changed column name/date patterns. Complex structure changes would still force you to update the existing XML map.
Either way you do it, it will be a pain and the source of the problem is the unstable target WSDL. I would suggest attempting to resolve this issue by discussing with the developers/management about the difficulties caused by frequently changing the WSDL.
