What's new in HALE 2.7

These are the descriptions of some of the more interesting or significant changes made to HALE for the 2.7.0 release since the last stable release 2.6.0.

User Interface
Join features HALE now supports attribute based joins of different feature classes - and the user interface to easily configure these joins. To create a Join select multiple source types and one target type and choose the Join function. In the function wizard use the Help button to get detailed information on the configuration steps.

Project templates To make your start with HALE easier, HALE now offers the possibility to use pre-configured project templates, e.g. for mapping to the INSPIRE Application Schemas. Also, you can share your own projects as templates online, to make them available to others:

http://hale.igd.fraunhofer.de/templates/

To select a template and to load it in HALE, use the New project from template option in the File menu or use the Project URL copied from the template website and use Open Alignment project and From URL.

Conditions from occurring values Easily create conditions on types or properties based on the values found in the loaded source data.
When doing data analysis based on the Occurring values in the Properties view, you can now create conditions on the corresponding schema elements with just one click.

Project and resources view The new Project view lists all resources like source schemas, target schemas or code lists that are associated to the project. Also, you can edit basic project information in combination with the Properties view. Some types of resources, like code lists and lookup tables, can be removed here from the project using the context menu.

Transformation and formats
Improved support for INSPIRE HALE now supports the new code list XML format introduced recently by the INSPIRE registry. These code lists are relevant for the latest versions of the Annex II and III Application Schemas.
In addition, transformed INSPIRE compliant features can now be saved to GML directly as an INSPIRE SpatialDataSet instead of the deprecated GML FeatureCollection.
Export to JSON/GeoJSON Transformed data can now be exported to JSON or GeoJSON, independently of what kind of schema the data is associated to. Objects are generically encoded as JSON/GeoJSON according to their structure.
File name attribute for Shapefiles In cases where there are multiple Shapefiles with the same structure but each representing a different kind of object, the mapping can now be done based on a newly introduced attribute that represents the file name of the Shapefiles and can be used to express conditions.
Create function HALE can not only be used for transforming objects, it now also supports creating objects independently of a source schema or data using the Create function. This can be helpful to create objects with static information only.