I am working on a school project and am having some issue figuring this out. My team and I’s problem is that we have 24 XML files from our sponsor (they make custom garage doors), and it is unstructured data that needs to be organized to be able to determine trends, patterns, etc. We need help on figuring out how to create a mock database for those 24 files so Alteryx can pull from the DB instead of entering each file individually, (since the sponsor has millions of files it wouldn’t work to enter each individually).
The sponsor’s current situation is that they pull text files from an Oracle DB that are made into XML files when extracted. My team doesn’t have access to the Oracle DB so we need to make a mock DB (doesn’t have to be Oracle) that will mimic this to show how Alteryx can structure the unstructured data.
The tool in the first image is the macro. A macro inside Alteryx is kind of like a mini workflow that you wrap up into its own tool. The first tool is actually a directory tool rather than an Input Data tool which will pull a list of file paths from a folder.
The general idea of a macro is to build it out as if you were parsing one file. Then, you add a control parameter and an action tool on top of the Input Data tool which converts it into a macro. Then, you can feed in a list of file paths (Directory tool) so it will perform the series of steps on each file that is passed through and stack all of the results at the end.This was one of Alteryx Interview Questions.They may seem complex at first, but they are quite easy to make and a macro sounds like a perfect fit for what you are looking to do. Whether you have 4 XML files or you have 400 XML files, if they have the same structure to be parsed you can do them all in one go.