- Legacy Data in General
- Legacy Network Management Data
- Role of XML in Network Management
- Migrating Some Legacy Data into XML
- Using the Article Source Code
- Conclusion
- References
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Migrating Some Legacy Data into XML
Let's assume that we decided that some of the legacy NMS data are a candidate for migration into a brand-new NMS product. We want to convert the old data into XML format so that our ultra-modern Java applications can use it. Listing 2 illustrates a text file that contains some typical legacy NMS data that relates to our old friend LER A from Figure 1.
Listing 2 Legacy NMS Node Data for LER A (Contained in File LegacyNMSData1.txt)
Contact: Stephen Morris Email: stephenbjm@yahoo.com Phone: 1800 512 9999 System name: LER A IP-capable: Yes MPLS-capable: Yes Last Discovery: 1 January 2005 Location: Europe
The data in Listing 2 might have been sitting in a relational database from which it was exported into a flat ASCII file. This is the scenario I assume. In passing, I note two fields in Listing 2 that are of interest to a network manager: IP-capable and MPLS-capable. These fields simply describe the fact that the host device (LER A) supports these technologies. Given this support, the NMS can then allow appropriate operations to be executed against LER A (such as LSP creation/termination).
So, we now want to migrate the data in Listing 2 into XML format. This means that we want to see the Listing 2 data as illustrated in Listing 3 (Listing 3 is the output from some Java code we'll look at shortly).
Listing 3 XML Version of the Legacy Data
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <nodedata> <contact>Stephen Morris</contact> <email>stephenbjm@yahoo.com</email> <telephone>1800 512 9999</telephone> <sysnname>LER A</sysnname> <IP-capable>Yes</IP-capable> <MPLS-capable>Yes</MPLS-capable> <Last Discovery>1 January 2005</Last Discovery> <Location>Europe</Location> </nodedata>
In Listing 3, our Java program has converted the column headings at the left of Listing 2 into XML tags. This is purely for convenience and is driven by the parser code illustrated in Listing 4.
Listing 4 Parsing Code for Legacy Data Migration
handler.startDocument();
handler.startElement(nsu, rootElement, rootElement, atts);
output("contact", "Contact", line);
line = br.readLine();
output("email", "Email", line);
line = br.readLine();
output("telephone", "Phone", line);
line = br.readLine();
output("sysnname","System name", line);
line = br.readLine();
output("IP-capable", "IP-capable", line);
line = br.readLine();
output("MPLS-capable", "MPLS-capable", line);
line = br.readLine();
output("Last Discovery", "Last Discovery", line);
line = br.readLine();
output("Location", "Location", line);
The elements of Listing 4 correspond with the legacy data in Listing 2. For the grisly details about using the XSLT/SAX API, please see the excellent J2EE tutorial cited in the References section at the end of this article.