Full Context Delta

Two key benefits of the delta generated by DeltaXML are:

• the delta has the same look and feel as your original files, making it easy to understand and process
• you can choose to include or exclude unchanged data

If you include the unchanged data, this is known as a 'Full Context' delta. It is useful for showing changes in documents in context, for example. But you may not want a full context delta when you have very large input files and you just want to see what has changed.

You can see how this works in the example below: check or uncheck the 'Full Context' box to see the effect of this:

• Click ORIGINAL to return to the original values, showing that a minimal changes-only delta has just the root element present.
• Click SUBTREE ADDED to see that a subtree which is added (or deleted) will always be present in full in both types of delta. This means that the changes-only delta is symmetrical and can update the old to the new or undo changes from the new back to the old.
• Click MODIFIED ELEMENT CONTENT to see that the immediate content, i.e. its child elements or PCDATA, of an element which has been modified (here an attribute is deleted) will always appear.
• Click ATTRIBUTE EXAMPLE to see that unchanged attributes will not appear unless you select full context.

Notice that the format of the full context and the changes-only delta is the same, and this makes it much easier to understand and process.

Configuration Options

Full Context

DeltaXML Input and Output