Integration with Altova Products
In How It Works, you have seen an overview of Altova products working together. Essentially, mapping files created with Altova MapForce and transformation files created with Altova StyleVision can be automated with the help of the following server counterpart products: MapForce Server (or MapForce Server Advanced Edition) and StyleVision Server. In addition, functions available in RaptorXML Server can also be invoked from FlowForce Server jobs, if the latter runs under FlowForce Server management.
MapForce Server and StyleVision Server can run mappings and transformations across multiple platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux), either at the command line, or from an API call. If these products do not run alongside FlowForce, automation entails developing programs or writing scripts which call the API or invoke the command line of MapForce Server or StyleVision Server.
When MapForce Server and StyleVision Server run under FlowForce Server management, automation can be taken to the next level. Namely, you can deploy the mappings and transformations directly to FlowForce Server and run them as jobs. This way, the mapping or transformation will benefit from all the advantages of a FlowForce Server job: scheduled or on demand execution, execution as a Web service, AS2 integration, configuration by means of FlowForce expressions, error handling, conditional processing, email notifications, and so on.
Once deployed to FlowForce Server, the mapping or transformation appears in the container to which you deployed it. As illustrated below, mappings have the .mapping extension while transformations have the .transformation extension.
From a FlowForce perspective, such objects are actually functions, and thus can be turned into new jobs. They can also be called from existing jobs, and accept various inputs (typically, files) as parameters. Note that FlowForce Server does not execute such mapping or transformation functions by itself; MapForce Server or StyleVision Server (or both, depending on the case) are invoked to perform the actual execution.
The RaptorXML functions are available in the RaptorXML container, see also Integration with RaptorXML Server.
The next sections discuss how to prepare mappings and transformations for server execution, how to turn them into jobs and how to process their results in FlowForce Server.