Introduction to the New DTL Editor

What’s New

The new DTL Editor differs from the legacy editor as follows:

• Switch panel layout: The DTL Editor supports a side-to-side and top-to-bottom layout. Click the layout button on the top ribbon to experiment with this.

• Scrolling:

  • Independent scrolling: The left and right section (source and target) of the DTL can be scrolled independently by using the up and down arrows in the top ribbon.

  • Joint scrolling: Scrolling using the mouse track pad or scroll wheel will scroll both the target and source columns in parallel

• Ordinal numbering: The visual editor allows you to toggle on and off viewing the ordinal numbers and full path expression for each segment.

• Most fields provide autocomplete suggestions on the actions that use ObjectScript as the language.

• The editor provides a Redo button.

Accessing the New DTL Editor

To access the new DTL Editor:

1. In the Management Portal, select Interoperability > Build > Data Transformations.

   This displays the legacy DTL Editor.

2. Click Try the new UI.

   This displays the new DTL Editor.

You can also access the new DTL Editor from the new Production Configuration page.

A Look at the User Interface

When first displayed, the new DTL Editor contains two areas. The upper area displays the source and target messages, along with options that enable you to work with the data transformation as a whole:

Notice the name of the DTL being edited (Scan.ChangeForSafeEmailDTL in this example) and the names of the source and target message classes (Scan.CheckEmployeeRequest in both cases, in this example). This area of the page is meant to provide a quick visual overview of the DTL. In most cases, a DTL copies or modifies parts of the source message class to the target message class, and the connection lines indicate this visually.

The menu bar provides options you can use to do the following:

• Undo or redo your most recent change, via the buttons on the top left.

• Display the two parts of the page size by side, via the Side by Side button.

• Create a new DTL transform or open an existing one (via the New and Open buttons, respectively).

• Save the transform or save it to a new name (via the Save and Save As buttons, respectively).

• Compile the transform (via the Compile button).

• Display the test page (via the Test button).

• Display other details for the transformation, via the gear icon on the right.

In this area, via drag and drop, you can add new actions—specifically the kinds of actions that modify values. To do so, select an option from Create new and then hover the cursor over a field in the source message and drag to a field in the target message; you can create SET, APPEND, INSERT, CLEAR, and REMOVE actions.

The bottom area of the page shows the actual DTL transformation, which is an ordered list of actions. In the following example, the DTL contains four actions.

The menu bar of this area allows you to make more detailed changes to the DTL. Here you can do the following:

• Cut, copy, and paste actions from one spot to another.

• Delete actions.

• Move actions to earlier or later parts of the DTL.

• Disable actions.

• Create new actions, via the New dropdown. In contrast to the button in the upper area, this dropdown lets you create any kind of action. When you select an option from this dropdown, a dialog box prompts for details.

When you select an action in this list, the display changes so that you can make edits.

See Also

• Introduction to DTL Tools

• DTL Syntax Rules

• Listing and Managing Data Transformations

• Testing Data Transformations

• Introduction to the New Production Configuration Page