Defuddle - an open source descriptive parser for text and binary data.

What it is... a generic data translation/extraction engine that supports mapping arbitrary ASCII and binary file formats to a data model defined in XML Schema using the XML-based Data Format Description Language (DFDL). Several useful cases for defuddle are..

• Integration of different data formats, for collaboration of data generated before/without standardization.
• Long-term preservation and retrieval of data when the applications used to create it are no longer available.
• Allowing the naming/identification of arbitrary file sub/super-structures.
• Provide efficient, general data access capabilities and random access within large structures.
• Data Virtualization, where you may want to provide multiple descriptions of the same data, or use DFDL as general subsetting/transformation mechanism.

Semantic Data Grid	Global Grid Forum DFDL working group