You can choose how the Integration Service handles null data or empty strings when it writes elements and attributes to an XML target file. By default, the Integration Service does not output element tags or attribute names for null values. The Integration Service outputs tags and attribute names with no content for empty strings.

To change these defaults, you can change the Null Content Representation and Empty String Content Representation XML target properties. For attributes, change Null Attribute Representation and the Empty String Attribute Representation properties.

Choose one of the following values for each property:

You can specify fixed or default values for elements and attributes. When an element in an XML schema or a DTD has a default value, the Integration Service inserts the value instead of writing empty content. When an element has a fixed value in the schema, the value is always inserted in the XML file. If the XML schema or DTD does not specify a value for an attribute and the attribute has a null value, the Integration Service omits the attribute.

If a required attribute does not have a fixed value, the attribute must be a projected field. The Integration Service does not output invalid attributes to a target. An error occurs when a prohibited attribute appears in an element tag. An error also occurs if a required attribute is not present in an element tag. The Integration Service writes these errors to the session log or the error log when you enable row error logging.

The following table describes the format of XML file elements and attributes that contain null values or empty strings: