Re: Comparing two XML documents

It should be relatively easy to turn each of these into some normalised
form using xslt such that you can then just run diff or some other text
file differencing tool.

I can't suggest the exact XSLT that you need as your excerpts didn't
show enough of the structure.
your xml file 1 isn't well formed (multiple top level elements) I assume
there is a surrounding element that you didn't show?
and you said

  I have two XML documents which are logically equivalent

but there are several elements for which the equivalence isn't obvious,
eg what corresponds to <level>16</level> in your 2nd format?

howver running

<xsl:template match="code[@type='relationship constraint']">
 relationship constraint: <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="IMPLIES">
 relationship constraint: [<xsl:text/>
 <xsl:for-each select="CONCEPT">
   <xsl:value-of select="@name"/>
   <xsl:if test="postition()!=last()">, </xsl:if>
 </xsl:for-each>
 <xsl:text>]</xsl:text>
</xsl:template>

will turn

   <code type="relationship 
constraint">[MildSeverity,ModerateSeverity,SevereSeverity]
                                        </code>

and

    <IMPLIES>
            <CONCEPT name="MildSeverity" ref="10238"/>
            <CONCEPT name="ModerateSeverity" ref="10239"/>
            <CONCEPT name="SevereSeverity" ref="10240"/>
        </IMPLIES>

both into



relationship constraint: [MildSeverity,ModerateSeverity,SevereSeverity]

which should allow for easy comparison.

David

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