I have taken to watching Channel 9 videos instead of TV. There is really great content out there. The latest video I watched concerns the the BizTalk Schema Mapper. It is effectively a visual editor that comes with MS BizTalk used to processes incoming documents and convert them to new XSD comparability formats. This automated schema matching processor actually uses pattern heuristics to try and make good guesses at matching XML structures into the new schemas as the document gets transformed.
This could be very handy for processing things like HL7 (v3 is XML) messages and transforming them to a proprietary message format for use in feeding a particular system like a scheduler. Or maybe you need to map from EDI to a purchase order, DITA to DocBook, you get the idea. The way the mapper works, an XML node complying with a source schema is handed to a small script “fungtoid” that processes the element into a structure compliant with the destination XSD.
In this way, element transformations can be scripted with power far beyond that of an XSLT template. Within your scripted “fungtoid” you may do anything programmatically available to the environment. For example, one could even use incoming XML as a triggering mechanism for an eventing architecture, and the resulting XML document could be the result document of the events. Now that’s pretty cool.
One big piece of coolness of this utility for BizTalk is the user experience. Imagine trying to visualize a 15,000 element XML file visually. These guys have found a way. Apparently there is a group within MS that focuses primarily of visualizations and user experience of large data representations. Wow, there’s a niche for you.