Get them to create an xsd for their xml. That gives you a rigid guideline of what the xml document will look like (they can't cheat an xsd). You need this as an agreement on what you can and can't do with their data. Provide guidance on the data you need to do things on the Remedy side. Do not get hung up on the format. xml parses/transforms easily.
If you want to be clever, you could create an ARDBC plugin that accepts an XSD and file (or location to a file) and presents that in a vendor form. If you are comfortable with xml, xsd, xslt, the ardbc java plugin interface, the java plugin server architecture/utilization, and the java programming language, it should be fairly straight forward. If you are more comfortable with C, you could write it with that language instead of Java. You could also write a Java/C program that runs via cron or some other scheduler (daemonized/internal), that reads a given xml file, given an xsd, (and possibly incorporates an xslt) and maps the entries to form(s) within Remedy. This may be a better option as you won't need to rely on escalations or other means of scheduling that contends for scarce resources (I find escalation timing/scheduling reliability to be unreliable in most shops I walk into, due to the mess of escalations already running; yes I know pools help with this, but they also have a tendency to tie up a remedy server). The xsd is handy because it is very easy to validate an xml document using an xsd. If you are going to work in this space, rely on that to validate the xml data before consuming it. Run a check on the document, and if it conforms, process it; if it does not conform, throw an exception and chunk it. If you decide to go down the programming/api route, don't try to write your own xml parser. There are too many good/reliable/proven/open libraries to do that for you. There are many nuances in the xml related specifications that you simply don't have to worry about if you use a good set of libraries. JSS's XML Gateway is good at this. The approach that makes the most sense, given your situation, depends on whether you have more money than time and/or expertise. Axton Grams On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 5:33 AM, Ser Lif <serlifp...@gmail.com> wrote: > This is a customer self developed application. No ITSM. They have built a > Form with workflow controlling all their processes data driven. I expect a > ARIS xml file with data in it but wrong xml format. To be honest, I do not > know what the ARIS XML-file will look like exactly so far. We are in the > gather requirements phase trying to sort out what is possible. The ARIS > guys have not created a sample xml-file yet. The used to type the data > directly into the ars-form from an excel sheet. > > > _______________________________________________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org > "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years" > _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years"
