[casual_games] implementing the new IGDA data reporting standard...

[Injoy Games]

Fantastic...

Glad to see this initiative you discussed some time back actually moving 
into action.

Alex
InjoyGames.com

On Tue, 7 Nov 2006 6:10 am, James Gwertzman wrote:
> You’ve all probably heard by now about the new IGDA data reporting 
> standard that we are working to implement across the industry. The goal 
> of this standard is to make it possible for business partners to report 
> sales to each other electronically (as opposed to using paper reports 
> or non-standard electronic reports which must be manually reentered 
> into a sales database).
>
> Several companies are now actively participating in this initiative, 
> and plan to begin distributing royalty reports using this new format in 
> the next month or two, including RealNetworks, PlayFirst, Reflexive 
> Entertainment, and PopCap Games. I asked the engineer at Reflexive 
> responsible for implementing this standard to write up a description of 
> the work involved; his report is below. My hope is that for anyone 
> considering implementing the standard, but worried about the work 
> involved, this report will help you realize that it’s really pretty 
> easy.
>
> ---------------------------
>
> James Gwertzman
>
> Director of Business Development
>
> PopCap Games, Inc.
>
> +1-206-256-4210
>
> ============
>
> Reflexive Entertainment sends out monthly royalty reports in PDF format 
> to our developers and affiliates.  Although PDF documents are portable 
> and look great, they are not suited for automated data transfer.  
> This means that hundreds of developers and affiliates must manually 
> import our data into their own systems, if they want to run sales 
> reports across all their channels.  Since the IGDA Casual Games Data 
> Reporting Initiative helps eliminate manual entry, and therefore reduce 
> error, we thought it would be a great idea to implement the XML output 
> in our own reporting system.
>
> Integrating the XML standard into our existing reporting tools was 
> painless.  It took about one full work day from the time I started 
> reading the specifications to the time our report engine was correctly 
> spitting out data in the new XML format.  Since our 
> reporting software already loads in all of the data from our remote 
> sales database in order to create the PDF files, I didn't have to deal 
> with retrieving or calculating the data in the code.  Therefore, 
> the entire process for me consisted of the following:
>
> 1. Figure out which values need to be included in the XML report.
>
> 2. Create a new function that accepts sales data for an account and 
> outputs their values as XML.
>
> 3. Call the new function for each account.
>
> To determine which elements to output, I referred mostly to the 
> "XDRI_Report.xsd" and "amazing.xml" files included in the IGDA Casual 
> Games Data Reporting downloadable zip file.  For example, the XML 
> schema included optional elements for Subscription and Tournament 
> data.  Since Reflexive does not offer subscription or tournament 
> sales, I didn't need to write those elements to the XML file.  
> Determining whether an element is optional is as simple as reading off 
> the "minOccurs" value in the schema for that element.  If minOccurs=0, 
> then the element is not required. 
>
> Only basic understanding of XML is required.  Luckily, 
> XML creation is well supported in most programming languages.  
> Our reporting software is written in C#, which means that I was able 
> to use an XmlTextWriter object to output the data values as XML 
> elements.  For example, to create a new XML document that contains the 
> "title" value, one can write:
>
> string ReportTitle = "Reflexive Arcade Royalty Report";
>
> XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter();
>
> writer.WriteStartElement("report");
>
> writer.WriteElementString("title", ReportTitle);
>
> writer.WriteEndElement();
>
> This would create the following XML:
>
> <report>
>
> <title>Reflexive Arcade Royalty Report</title>
>
> </report>
>
> Using similar commands as above, I was able to create an entire XML 
> document per the specs.  Reflexive includes additional information in 
> our PDF reports than is required by the IGDA standard.  However, the 
> standard provides a way for us to include this data as well in the XML 
> reports through the use of optional <note> elements.  The 
> "amazing.xml" document provides some examples of the <note> element 
> that we chose to implement, such as information about game file 
> sizes, MBytes served, download costs, phone orders, phone costs, and 
> e-commerce fees.
>
> In conclusion, integrating the XML standard into our existing reporting 
> system was quick and straightforward.  We look forward to the time 
> when all developers, affiliates, and publishers can share data using 
> this standard format.
>
> Isaac Shepard
>
> Senior Software Engineer
>
> Reflexive Entertainment

Alex Ahlund
InjoyGames.com
> Sent from a mobile device<