There are numeral ways to read the data from external sources to populate data set or to retrieve requirements tags and UI Map. All you have to do is the specify the source uri in one of the following formats (rel 3.1.17):

• Excel:filePath;sheet1Name:col1Name,Col2Name,…;sheet2Name:col1Name,…
• CSV:filePath;col1Name,col2Name,…
• TSV:filePath;col1Name,col2Name,…
• URL:urlAddress;col1Name,col2Name,… (assume tab delimited)
• Java:javaClassName;methodName;param (must return tab separated list of String (List<String>) with first row containing column names.

For reading Excel, CSV and TSV, the system will search for the file in the following order:

1. absolute path as specified in filePath
2. dataset folder in the model folder
3. model folder

If the source contains more columns than needed, you may specify a list of columns as shown in the example above.

For Excel Only: the following format/version of Excel are supported:

  Excel 95, 97, 2000, XP, and 2003 workbooks

You can use the above notation in db attribute in DataSet tag and UI Map URI in Model Property. With this approach, you will not need to define <db> tag.