I wanted to ask if someone can point me to a good source that will help me with the following development need. I have been asked to write a flexible interface that will enable many custom XML files to be parsed into and created from a database. These are very complex XML files and I expect to periodically make additions to the mapping.

I would like to find a general way of using LLBL with some form of instructions that are maintained in order to parse or create the custom XML files.

I know there are a lot of ways of doing this but I expect that some of the forum users in here would have some very good experiecen to point to and offer.

The DB will change but regenerating the LLBL from it after changes is not a problem.

The XML also will not change but there will be maybe 10 to write interfaces to.

Thanks in advance.

What do you mean by "Custom XML files"? Are they generated xml based on the structure and data of an entity or XML columns?

By "Custom" I mean that there are industry trading partners that use an XML schema that is not related in any way to the Database or generated LLBL entities of that database. The XML files to create and also to import are pretty dissimilar to the database structure although the data exists in the database but will require enumeration conversions in many cases and and also some rules to convert other data (like one field may be split into two or visa versa and also just different ways of capturing data that will need to be converted between).

I'm not sure if LLB is the correct tool to use if you are transferring data from one format to another in a complex way.

Have you tried something like BizTalk or SQL Server SSIS.

Thankyou - I was not aware of "SQL Server SSIS". I am familiar with Biztalk - I like it but cant afford the licensing model. I use LLBL and like it knowing it cant help me with this issue. but there are a lot of good developers in these forums so I was looking for exactly what you provided.

thanks