The Cogent “Data Translator” is a Microsoft .NET, wizard driven application designed to facilitate the translation of data files from a variety of text formats into XML, and vice-versa. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a simple, flexible, text based format which is widely used for exchanging data between systems and across the web. Many systems and third party interfaces are now designed to solely import and export data in the XML format.

The “Data Translator” allows a non-technical user to design and save translation templates for reading, processing, translating, and mapping data fields between text files and the XML format, without requiring programmer support. Data can be translated to or from any number of text file formats, including fixed length, delimited, and EDI variable record formats.

In addition to mapping data fields from one file format to another, the “Data Translator” allows the user to apply formatting and validation functions to the data as part of the translation. Using these intrinsic functions, dates can be reformatted, data completeness can be verified, specified character sequences can be replaced with user defined values, and more.

The “Data Translator” is included as the import utility with BSI’s Cogent Collection Software. The “Data Translator” easily allows a law firm or collection agency to receive collection accounts in any source format without programming assistance.