The information below outlines how you can use the comparison tool to compare a source and target system.
Select Source and Target configuration file
Once a user has logged into the comparison tool they will firstly need to select XML exported from the source system and XML exported from the target system as illustrated below:
- Select the exported XML file from the source system
- Select the exported XML file from the target system
Select how you want to filter the configurations
Once the XML files have been selected the user will need to select how the comparison tool should filter the differences.
- Only in Source – Filter on configurations that only exist on the source system
- Only in Target – Filter on configurations that only exist on the target system
- Different – Filter on what is different between the source and target system
- Identical – Filter on what is identical between the source and target system
- Compare Files – Once selected the relevant configuration will be highlighted depending on the filter options selected above
If you need to change the filter options selected, change them and click Compare Files to update
Viewing configuration differences when ‘Only In Source’ is selected for example
Outlined below is an example of how to filter what is only in the source XML file.
The comparison tool will give an overview of the following:
- Only In Source
- Only in Target
- Different
- Identical
In this example the user has selected to filter on ‘Only In Source’, when the user opens the attribute list configuration which indicates one attribute the user is shown the attributes that appear in the source system only.
Note: If you select the Expand All option the user is shown all configurations related to the filter selected i.e., Only In Source.
Viewing the differences in the comparison tool
Within the comparison tool users are able to view what the difference is between the XML files from source and target systems.
If there are differences for each of the filters between the source and target systems users are able to view these differences by selecting the hyperlink for each difference
If you select the hyperlink highlighted in screenshot above you will be shown the STEPXML for the List Of Values group that only exists in the source system as follows:
Generate STEPXML with the configuration differences
Finally the user will need to select the check boxes to identify the configuration required to be exported and then generated an XML file based on this selection.
- Select the configuration that needs to be moved to the target system. In this case it is the List Of Values Group List.
- Check Single Update Mode option
- If STEPXML generated needs to make updates that require single update mode this option must be checked. Examples of what puts a system into Single Update Mode are given later in the document
- Generate STEPXML by hitting the Generate STEPXML button
- Save XML file and name appropriately