Improve Designer XML comparison handling

[alekz]

Designer should show diffs when it comes to XML when they actually matter.

Examples, sometimes XML in GCV objects in Designer get the attribute xml:space="preserve" and sometimes they don't. It seems to have with packages to do.

Designer should either decided to always add that attribute or never! Now you don't know if anything in the GCV has actually changed because the diff always shows that something has changed but it's actually just that attribute.

Next, sometimes Designer shows diffs when comparing the filter or the schema mapping policy.

The order maybe different (why? don't know!), it's just something that happens from time to time.

So the order of the attributes in a schema mapping or in a filter shouldn't matter.

If the same attribute under the same in class is both in Designer and the IDV and has the exact same XML attributes it should be considered to be the same. Right now it's only confusing. It should at least be possible to check a box for "ignore ordering" when comparing.

[dstagg]

@alekz, though it will not address all mis-ordered filter and schema-map comparisons, you can help to improve the order by sorting both of those objects in their respective editors. Where these objects come in packages from Micro Focus, a partner, or separate developer(s), who have not ordered them, there is not much you can do. The fact that the filter can be populated from multiple filter resource objects may still cause some confusion in ordering.

The quick trick/tip to ordering the filter or schema-map sections in Designer (which I did not realize for years) is to just click the top header row to sort them alphabetically. Clicking the the header again will toggle and reverse the sort order as well. If the attributes are sorted when deployed to eDirectory, and then saved to packages, the odds of being totally mixed up for future compares is greatly reduced.

Cheers,

D

[alekz]

Let me illustrate a behavior that is disturbing.

This is a screenshot from Designer doing a compare on a driver filter after doing a package upgrade. The new package was  built in the same Designer as the original package, a   day or so after the first package. But for some reason, now priority-sync is added  to   the new package filter. This is just an example, this happens on other objects containing XML as well.