• Chapter 1: Getting Started with Stylus Studio®
• Chapter 2: Editing and Querying XML
• Chapter 3: Converting Non-XML Files to XML
  • Introduction
  • DataDirect XML Converters
  • Custom XML Converters
  • The Custom XML Conversion Definition Editor
  • Parts of an Input File
    • Regions
      • Region Types
      • Managing Regions
    • Rows
    • Fields
  • Working with Regions
  • Working with Fields
  • Controlling XML Output
  • Creating a Custom XML Conversion Definition
  • Using Custom XML Conversion Definitions in Stylus Studio
  • Working with EDI Conversions
  • The Converter URL Scheme
  • Custom XML Conversion Definitions Properties Reference
• Chapter 4: Working with XSLT
• Chapter 5: Creating XSLT Using the XSLT Mapper
• Chapter 6: Debugging Stylesheets
• Chapter 7: Defining XML Schemas
• Chapter 8: Defining Document Type Definitions
• Chapter 9: Writing XPath Expressions
• Chapter 10: Working with XQuery in Stylus Studio
• Chapter 11: Composing Web Service Calls
• Chapter 12: Working with WSDL Documents
• Chapter 13: Building XML Pipelines
• Chapter 14: Publishing XML Data
• Chapter 15: Integrating with Third-Party File Systems
• Chapter 16: Extending Stylus Studio
• Chapter 17: The Stylus Studio Java API
• Chapter 18: Stylus Studio GUI Reference

Home > Online Product Documentation > Table of Contents > Regions

Regions

A region is the largest organizational component in an input file. Regions are interpreted by Stylus Studio when the input file is first read into the Custom XML Conversions Editor. You can use the editor to define your own, as well.

An input file can contain one or more regions; every input file has at least one region that starts at offset 0. Multiple regions are common in binary files, which often contain a fixed-size header and then one or more records containing the actual data. Regions are fixed in size and cannot repeat.

In the Custom XML Conversions Editor, regions are numbered, starting with 1, followed by the row number. For example, in an input file with two regions, you might see rows labeled as follows: 1:1, 2:1, 2:2, 2:3, and so on, as shown here:

Region Types

Regions can be fixed-width or line-oriented. You can also set the Region Type property to No-output. Regions that are marked as No-output are grayed out in the Custom XML Conversions Editor, and they are not converted to XML.

Managing Regions

Stylus Studio provides tools that let you create new regions, and join one region with another. You can also change a region's type, define different line terminators across regions, and mark a region so that it is excluded from output. For information on these and other topics, see Working with Regions.