In many kinds of XML documents you will encounter sequences of repeating elements of the same kind. XML Spy automatically detects such sequences and rearranges the presentation to show these elements in a tabular fashion that is a well-known paradigm from database- or spreadsheet-like applications.
XML Spy achieves this database/table view by taking the respecitve attributes and sub-elements of the repeating element and showing them as columns of the table This database/table view is fully integrated with the enhanced grid view and you can switch between both presentation forms for each element at will. Editing in the table view is again supported using advanced drag&drop and intelligent editing functions and you can use certain table-specific commands to sort elements or insert new rows. For easy data exchange with other applications, you can select elements in this table and simply copy/paste them directly into Access or Excel.
This feature does, of course, work both ways, so you can also easily copy data from any spreadsheet-like application into XML Spy. For more complex data exchange tasks, XML Spy also offers a set of unique conversion functions that lets directly you import/export XML data from any text file, Word document or database. |
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