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FISH Interoperability Toolkit

The FISH Interoperability Toolkit, funded by English Heritage, has been developed by the Forum on Information Standards in Heritage to assist with the process of moving information between the wide range of information systems used to record the historic environment. This site introduces and provides the main components of the Toolkit's Technical Tools while the MIDAS XML and HEEP specifications remain available from the original Toolkit web address and are linked to below. The tools available here are currently hosted by the ADS. Comments are welcomed on any aspect of the toolkit and, if you are interested in contributing or learning more, consider joining the FISH technical forum.

Please login to access the following tools:

• Toolkit Data Validator - This online application validates the content of MIDAS XML files. The presence or absence of data required by standards such as the English HER Level 1 Benchmark is checked. Reports are issued on compliance and a watermark is embedded in a new XML file for download.
• The Concordance Tool - This online application parses two MIDASXML files to find updated records. Reference and New XML files are checked for the updated or new records. Reporting consists of description and two automatically generated XML files. The first one consists of only the differences between the two files (i.e. new or updated records only) and the second one consists of Reference XML file plus new records and updated records.
• The Geospatial Tool - This tool reads a valid XML file finds coordinates in OSGB36 format and adds additional spatial elements for the same coordinates in WGS84 format. If the original coordinate format is WGS84 decimal degrees then additional elements in OSGB36 are added.
• Toolkit XML Mapping Tool - This tool allows the user to upload their own non-MIDAS XML schema (or sample file) use a visual mapping tool to map between this file and MIDAS XML and then carry out a transformation. The mapping itself is stored in an XSL file under a user specific login for later reuse in this system or it can be exported to allow the transformation to be carried out elsewhere. This tool currently requires an additional Login process.