1. 1 D O C U M E N T A T I O N & I N F O R M A T I O N S E R V I C E S 1 Improved Dissemination of NMMSS Products and Reports NMMSS Software Engineer 5/20/2009 Rick Edwards Marriott Denver City Center NMMSS 2009 Meeting

2. 2 XML and Stylesheets (XSL) XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. It is a language used by computers to transmit data. It is particularly useful for communication between different types of information systems that would normally not be compatible with each other. One of the main strengths of the XML language is that it is fairly easy for humans to read and understand. XSL: The Style of XML The greatest flexibility of XML is that it has no rules for display, its just data So to easily view XML there needs to be style information included in an XML document. This can be HTML or style sheets, or XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language).

3. 3 How does NMMSS use XML? Emphasis line NMMSS Reports have an XML extension (.xml) and can be opened with Internet Explorer. The underlying data is XML and can be imported into other database/systems easily. Stylesheets(XSL) are used by the browser to translate the XML into the report product.

4. 4 What files make up a NMMSS Report? LSScript.cab ­ Contains generic formating and printing functions use by the XSL. ReportTemplate.xsl ­ Contains report headings, page headings and formating functions. TJ-045-FAC-DDD-REQ-20090312-0001.xml ­ Contains the data that makes up the report. TJ_00045.xsl ­ Contains the formating information to translate the xml into a readable report.

5. 5 Why use XML instead of the text files? Data is easily imported from XML into other applications such as EXCEL. Do not need a third party tool, like Crystal reports to view/create reports. In the future we can create reports that can expand from a summary view to a detail view. So reports like the I-27, which has two versions, a summary and detail, can be packaged as one report.

6. 6 LANMAS’ PIL (Physical Inventory Report)

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8. 8 Why use XML instead of the text files? Emphasis line