MTP is a general purpose text parsing application that permits the extraction of data from one of three types of text input; either incoming email, one or more text files or an ODBC database.
The application reads blocks of text from each available email, text file or selected database row. Each block of text is parsed and tested against selection criteria to determine if the text is to be further processed or if it is to be rejected. Further processing involves the location and extraction of one or more data strings that may then be used to construct output.
Output may be written to a text file and/or a database and/or an outgoing email.
The extraction of a data string is controlled by a set of rules that define how the data is to be located and then how it is to be filtered. The extraction rules are referred to as variables, which are identified by unique names. A variable thus symbolizes extracted data and can be referred to by name in subsequent parts of the process, such as the placement of extracted data into an outgoing email.