The transform builders

As the response of a SOAP request is returned in the XML data format, it makes sense to continue using this format throughout the models and all the way through the UI. In doing so, you have a standard way of manipulating data, be it in the provider or in the consumer models.

Due to the paradigm of reusability of services, it is not uncommon to retrieve data from web services, which do not meet 100 percent of the UI requirements. That is, the format of the XML result does not fit the format the UI builders are expecting. Sometimes you need to remove a few fields from this result; in other occasions you might need to modify or merge fields. In summary, some transformation of the web service response might be required.

WEF provides a set of builders to perform such transformation. They are conveniently named Data Transformation builders. These builders provide a quick means of performing the required transformation without the need for coding. The utilization of such...