User`s guide

9 Comparing XML Files
9-2
Compare XML Files
You can use MATLAB Report Generator software to compare a pair of XML text files.
The XML comparison tool processes the results into a report that you can use to explore
the file differences.
You can access the XML comparison tool from:
• The MATLAB Current Folder browser context menu
• The MATLAB command line.
The XML comparison tool compares the files using the “Chawathe” algorithm, as
described in this paper:
Change Detection in Hierarchically Structured Information, Sudarshan Chawathe,
Anand Rajaraman, and Jennifer Widom; SIGMOD Conference, Montreal, Canada, June
1996, pp. 493-504.
This conference paper is based upon work published in 1995: see http://
dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/1995-45.
XML comparison reports display in the Comparison Tool. For more information about the
Comparison Tool, see “Comparing Files and Folders” in the MATLAB documentation.
The XML comparison report shows a hierarchical view of the portions of the two XML
files that differ. The report does not show sections of the files that are identical.
If the files are identical you see a message reporting there are no differences.
Note: It might not be possible for the analysis to detect matches between previously
corresponding sections of files that have diverged too much.
Change detection in the Chawathe analysis is based on a scoring algorithm. Items
match if their Chawathe score is above a threshold. The MATLAB Report Generator
implementation of Chawathe's algorithm uses a comparison pattern that defines the
thresholds. For more information, see “How the Matching Algorithm Works” on page
9-10.
For information about creating and using XML comparison reports, see: