HELP - Getting a Difference between XML documents?

[Ed]

Hi,

I have 2 sets of XML documents.

XML1 is:
<Root>
<Node1>111</Node1>
<Node2>222</Node2>
<Node3>333</Node3>
<Node4>
<Node4A>444A</Node4A>
<Node4B>444B</Node4B>
</Node4>
<Node5>555</Node5>
</Root>

XML2 is:
<Root>
<Node1>111</Node1>
<Node2>222New</Node2>
<Node3>333</Node3>
<Node4>
<Node4A>444A</Node4A>
<Node4B>444BNew</Node4B>
</Node4>
<Node5>555New</Node5>
</Root>

Essentially, what I want to do in my VB Dot Net application is to have XML2 - XML1, where the result would be:

<Root>
<Node2>222New</Node2>
<Node4>
<Node4B>444BNew</Node4B>
</Node4>
<Node5>555New</Node5>
</Root>

Only the differring nodes remain.

Is something like this possible? Please Help.

Thanks,
ed

 

[Gabriel_k]

I think you should take a look at the xslt extension.. especially the function differance http://www.exslt.org/set/functions/difference/index.html

I just found out recently that the functions in EXSL can be found in MSXML too by declaring the right namespace.

/Gabriel

"Ed" skrev i meddelandet

Hi,

I have 2 sets of XML documents.

XML1 is:
<Root>
<Node1>111</Node1>
<Node2>222</Node2>
<Node3>333</Node3>
<Node4>
<Node4A>444A</Node4A>
<Node4B>444B</Node4B>
...

 

[Oleg Tkachenko]

Only the differring nodes remain.

Is something like this possible? Please Help.

Take a look at Microsoft XML Diff tool -
http://apps.gotdotnet.com/xmltools/xmldiff

 

[apm]

Take a look at Microsoft XML Diff tool -
http://apps.gotdotnet.com/xmltools/xmldiff

Now if only there was a platform-independent, GPL'd version

-Andrew Marlow

 

[Aleksi Kallio]

Only the differring nodes remain.

Now if only there was a platform-independent, GPL'd version

How about X-Diff? It has C++ ja Java implementations and it's a real difference algorithm - most normal algorithms assume that the order of elements is significant, thus reducing the problem to finding the difference between two strings.

But it is recommended that in XML the order of child elements would not be significant. In that case one might think that the task reduces to finding a difference between two trees - which is NP-Complete. However, by taking advantage of some properties of XML documents, X-Diff runs in polynomial time.

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~yuanwang/xdiff.html

 

[Oleg Tkachenko]

Now if only there was a platform-independent, GPL'd version

AFAIK java versions do exist also, from IBM alphaworks to mention one.

 

[Ed]

Thanks for all the responses.. I'm gonna give the XML Diff tool a look!