FpML Demystified: Understanding the Data Dictionary and Examples

Welcome to the fifth part of our series on the introduction to FpML documentation. In this article, we will let you know where to find the data dictionary and how to work with FpML examples.

FpML has Data Dictionary. You can access it here: https://www.fpml.org/spec/fpml-5-12-4-rec-1/html/confirmation/schemaDocumentation/index.html

The left-top corner contains filters. You can select “All components” or you can browse by specific XML Schema.

The last element that we want to show are examples included in the documentation.

The first source of the examples is online documentation. You can go to the page:

https://www.fpml.org/spec/fpml-5-12-4-rec-1/html/confirmation/fpml-5-12-examples.html

Each example has a short description and a link to a sample XML file.

Each browser should allow you to read the XML file. Most probably you will want also to install an additional extension to your browser to make reading XML files more convenient. An example of such extension is XML Plus for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xml-plus/jmhicemblbmkcbonbhkjmflehkmkiidj

Sample files are also available offline. Please recall the schema files downloaded in the previous chapter from this site: https://www.fpml.org/spec/fpml-5-12-4-rec-1/xml/confirmation-5-12_xml.zip

Please navigate to the folder where you unpacked the data: \…\confirmation-5-12_xml\confirmation\products. Each folder here contains examples of deals in FpML format. Let’s open “ird-ex01a-vanilla-swap” from the folder: “interest-rate-derivatives”.

Usually, the default way to open XML files is to use your browser. However, it will be more convenient if you use for example Notepad++ (you can download it from here: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/). To make it even more convenient, you can install the Notepad++ plugin to view the XML tree (We are using this one: https://github.com/joaoasrosa/nppxmltreeview. To install it, open Notepad++, go to Plugins top menu, and select “Plugins Admin”. Over there, search for the name “Npp XML Treeview”).

At the end of the process, you should be able to see something like this:

There are also more advanced tools to inspect and manipulate XML files. Good example here is EditiX – the open-source XML editor (https://www.editix.com/).

Photo by Michael Discenza on Unsplash

FpML