Summary

In this chapter we've successfully consumed XML files in our integration activities. Along the way we've explored a number of aspects of working with XML as well as some other extremely useful capabilities of ODI 11g:

• We've seen how XML Data Servers are associated with file references—both for the datafiles and their schema definitions and how, by using ODI Procedures, we can manipulate those files to enable a single data server access to multiple sets of file data.

  There are other, more sophisticated ways to achieve this, but at least we've covered enough to "get started".

• We took a look at how the XML driver breaks down a hierarchical tag structure from a file into a number of related in-memory tables and how it adds columns to maintain the ordering of entries and the relationships between them.

• We've experienced the separation between the file data and those in-memory tables and how care must be taken to ensure that these are synchronized if changes are made to one or the other.

• We...