Chapter 9. Content Formatters

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Overview of Content Formatting

• Preparing the SQL-NS Instance

• Using the XsltFormatter

• Building a Custom Content Formatter

When a SQL-NS application matches events and subscriptions, it produces rows of notification data. To turn these rows of data into actual notifications, the application's distributor passes them through a content formatter that transforms the raw data into a meaningful message for the target recipient.

This chapter is all about content formatters: what they do, how they work, and how to use them in your own applications. We'll take an in-depth look at the built-in content formatter that SQL-NS provides, the XsltFormatter. You've already seen this formatter used in the examples in previous chapters, but this chapter explains some of its more advanced features and how to customize it for your own applications. This chapter also shows you how to build a custom content formatter.