Mergemill Pro Empowering Features

Mergemill Pro is a versatile software that quickly merges static contents in a template with data feeds to generate your desired output. It accepts data input from diverse sources, and provides you with diverse output options. Between reading from data feeds and generating the output, you may use Mergemill Pro's many powerful data processing options and features to select, manipulate, and transform the data. The software also provides a handful of easy-to-learn tags that enable you to embed scripts in the template. Such scripts control what and how data from feeds are to be integrated into the output with the static template text.

Data Input from Diverse Sources

• Local text file
• Remote text file, via FTP
• Local folder of text files
• Remote folder (or directory) of text files
• Emails from a Hotmail or standard POP3 account
• Web page, by specifying its URL
• A list of webpage URLs in a text file
• ODBC-compliant SQL data source
• Local RealSQLDatabase

Notes:

• Text file formats accepted are CSV, XML, HTML, and delimited text. All other text files are treated as plain text.
• For delimited text files, you may specify any character string or Regular Expression as the data or row delimiter.
• Where the data source is a folder, you may choose to read each contained file separately, or all of them as a single source.
• Where the data source is an email account, you may specify
1. the receive datetime to start reading or continue on where the last run of the job ended, and
2. the part to capture: sender (from), recipient (to), cc, subject, plain text message, HTML message, and the email raw content.
• Emails could also be read separately, or all as one source.
• Each URL on a list could be accessed as a separate document, or the whole list together as a single source.
• For HTML files, including webpages, you may choose to capture link URLs, link texts, body HTML, or body text.

Diverse Output Options

• Add records to or update records in an ODBC-compliant SQL data source.
• Generate plain or formatted text files with an option to automatically upload them to an FTP server as well.
• Easily export data to tab-delimited text files, CSV text files, or XML files, with an option to upload them via FTP.
• Build and send mass personalized email messages.
• Read out the generated text using the speech synthesizer available in the operating system.

Notes:

• Files generated can be in plain text, or in the template's original standard format such as HTML, XML, or RSS. They can also be structured in any custom format in the template.
• Mergemill Pro provides an option to remember the generated files, so that you may opt to generate only changed files. This is important where a job generates many files each time when actually a small portion of them are updated. The options could save you hours if you opt to automatically upload the generated files to a remote FTP server as well.
• Mergemill Pro features a dynamic output path component builder that lets you specify how the subfolders between the root output folder and the destination files are to be placed and named. Subfolder names may be generated dynamically from data values. In saving the generated files, subfolders that are absent will be automatically created.

Powerful Data Processing Options and Features

• Include filters allow you to set conditions to include or exclude certain data values.
• Fetch filters allow you to fetch from each data value the text strings that meet the conditions you specify.
• Multi-level data sorting: all columns of data values from the same feed are sorted together.
• 12 basic processing options that can be turned on or off using simple checkboxes: trim spaces, convert to lowercase, ...
• Search and replace text strings in data values. There is no limit to the number of search-and-replace actions to be applied to each data value.
• Add your own data processing code in BASIC to be compiled, run, and applied to data feeds. Mergemill Pro features RBScript in RealBasic, which is very similar to Microsoft Visual Basic.

Note:

• You may use Regular Expressions in setting filter conditions.
• Since the fetch filters may return multiple text strings from a data value, you are given the following options:
  • accept all strings and thereby growing the datafeed effectively,
  • accept only the first string, or
  • carry out a calculation to obtain the count, average, sum, maximum numeric value, or the minimum numeric value of the text strings.
• You don't need to do anything if you don't use the filters. The default settings will include each data value as it is.

Embedded Scripting with Just a Handful of Easy-to-Learn Tags

• Field tag
  • Field attributes may be used together. They control the actual text from the data value to be inserted.
    • UCase: returns the data text in uppercase
    • LCase: returns the data text in lowercase
    • TCase: returns the data text in titlecase, i.e., initial caps
    • AWords,nn: returns the first nn words of the data text
    • ZWords,nn: returns the last nn words of the data text
    • Left,nn: returns the first nn characters of the data text
    • Right,nn: returns the last nn characters of the data text
    • Mid,ss,nn: returns the nn characters of the data text, beginning at ss
    • Count: returns the total number of data values in the data column of the current stream for the field
    • Position: returns the position number of the current data value in the data column for the field
  • Lookup extension makes it very easy to use a lookup list.
  • Result number format enables you to control how the data value as a number is to be inserted.
  • Data value position offset lets you easily create multi-column lists in your output.
• Arithmetic expression tag
  • It allows you to perform basic arithmetic calculations to cover your regular data processing needs.
  • An operand can be a number, a field (which means its current data value), a system value like PageNum, a statistical function, or a variable.
  • Accepted operators are sum (+), difference (-), multiply (*), floating point division (/), integer division (\), remainder (%), and the exponential (^).
  • You may use parentheses to change operator precedence.
• Statistical function tags
  • Basic statistical functions include maximum, minimum, count, sum, average, sample standard deviation, and population standard deviation.
  • Linear regression functions include the constant term, regression coefficient, and the correlation coefficient.
• Looping tags
  • They are the important tags that enable you to generate a list in an output.
  • You may set a loop break count, or use the <?Exit?> tag to break a loop, or simply let Mergemill Pro break the loop at data stream boundaries by default.
• IF and CASE branching tags
  • You may nest them up to 100 levels deep.
  • The special <?If(Same[fieldname])?> tag performs a look-behind comparison.
  • You may include a data value position offset in the <?If(...)?> and <?Case(...)?> tags to perform a look-ahead comparison.
• System value tags
  • Easy insertion of system date and time values, as well as page URLs and page number.
  • <?YearNum?>, <?MonthNum?>, <?DayNum?>, <?DateYMD?>, <?DateLong?>, <?DateAbbr?>, <?TimeHMS?>, <?PrevPage?>, <?NextPage?>, and <?PageNum?>.
• Section tags
  • Use Variable assignment tags to initialize and change variable value, and use the Variable insertion tag to insert value into the output.
  • Use the Hide section tags for comments, spacings, or field tags that you don't want to appear in the output.
  • Use Speech section tags to mark blocks of output text to be spoken out.
  • Use Email section tags to mark the block of output text for each part of the email to be sent: from, to, cc, bcc, subject, HTML message, and plain text message.

Other Very Helpful Features

• Mergemill Pro features extensive support of Unicode and other text encodings. So long as you specify the text encoding of all your data sources correctly, the software can work with feeds, templates, and outputs in any language.
• Mergemill Pro manages jobs by projects. You can drag and drop jobs between projects, and drag the jobs to change their run order.
• Projects can all be set to autorun at scheduled times.
• If a job you want to add is like any one you have done, just duplicate the existing job, then edit the copy. This saves a lot of time.
• Sometimes setting up a complex job and its associated tasks can be daunting. Mergemill Pro’s extensive red-dot system alerts you to errors in your job and task settings. Just follow the dots to fix them one by one and you can easily create valid jobs. This enables you to focus your effort more on template designs to create useful solutions that solve real problems.
• The Mergemill Pro software package includes a Dreamweaver extension for constructing and inserting Mergemill tags into templates you develop using Adobe Dreamweaver.

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