Records and fields

At the heart of the FSD is the definition of the records and fields that appear in the flat data. A record contains fields in a fixed order, and a field defines the structure of the actual data.

Both records and fields have a name that is used to generate XML tags. For example, this FSD:

<?xml encoding='UTF8' version='1.0' ?>
<schema xmlns='http://www.infor.com/2017/TD/SSTransform/fsd' version='1.0'>
  <sequence output='no'>
    <record name='parent'>
      <field name='child'/>
    </record>
  </sequence>
</schema>

generates this XML structure:

<parent>
  <child/>
</parent>

By default, all records and fields are generated to the output. This can be overridden by setting the output attribute to no. This is useful if you want to specify the structure of the data without causing a tag to be generated in the XML.