Accessing XML documents
Before you can parse an XML document using an XML
PARSE statement, you must make the document available to
your program. Common methods of acquiring an XML document are by retrieval from a WebSphere® MQ
message, a CICS® transient queue
or communication area, or an IMS message processing queue; or by reading the document
from a file.
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If the XML document that you want to parse is held in a file, use ordinary COBOL facilities to place the document into a data item in your program:
- A
FILE-CONTROLentry to define the file to your program. - An
OPENstatement to open the file. READstatements to read all the records from the file into a data item (either an elementary item of category alphanumeric or national, or an alphanumeric or national group). You can define the data item in theWORKING-STORAGE SECTIONor theLOCAL-STORAGE SECTION.- Optionally, the
STRINGstatement to string all of the separate records together into one continuous stream, to remove extraneous blanks, and to handle variable-length records.
If the XMLPARSE(XMLSS) option
is in effect, you can parse an XML document that is in a file by passing
the parser one record (or segment) of text from the file
at a time. This capability is useful for parsing very large XML documents.