An XML Template is a template file that provides information about how to build an XML file having a particular mainframe screen as data source. XML Templates are built with Development Lab. Let's see an example:

When transforming this screen to XML we would like to use tags according what we know are labels and values according what we know that actually are values. As an example, we know that "Status of job" is a label and "ACTIVE" is its value. So, what we would like to see in translated to XML would be something like:

<StatusOfJob>ACTIVE</StatusOfJob>

With the help of Development Lab and our own help, we can define a template to instruct TN BRIDGE to translate the mainframe screen to a readable XML.

Here we can see how Labels and values were separated by Development Lab and this is the XML we get as result:

 <Screen>

   <Title>Display Job Status Attributes</Title>

   <System>TS400</System>

   <Job>QPADEV002V</Job>

   <User>GRICARDI</User>

   <Number>297131</Number>

   <StatusOfJob>ACTIVE</StatusOfJob>

   <CurrentUserProfile>GRICARDI</CurrentUserProfile>

   <JobUserIdentity>GRICARDI

 <SetBy>*DEFAULT</SetBy>

   </JobUserIdentity>

   <EnteredSystem>

     <Date>05/06/05</Date>

     <Time>08:21:47</Time>

   </EnteredSystem>

   <Started>

     <Date>05/06/05</Date>

     <Time>08:21:47</Time>

   </Started>

   <Subsystem>BASE

 <SubsystemPoolID>2</SubsystemPoolID>

   </Subsystem>

   <TypeOfJob>INTER</TypeOfJob>

   <SpecialEnvironment>*NONE</SpecialEnvironment>

   <ProgramReturnCode>1</ProgramReturnCode>

 </Screen>

It mightn't be perfect, but with an additional customization it might!