Microsoft Visio 2003, XML for Visio

My past development experience with Microsoft Visio 2003 was a workaround for the dropped CSV import functionality, as featured in previous versions.

Before 2003, 'CSV import' was something that many Excel folks relied on for "drawing" diagrams from their tabulated descriptions in a CSV file.

The worldwide financial data network mapping project that I was working on was affected by this. Initially we were stuck, as unlike other Office application software, Visio had no available COM methods for performing our drawings through VBA automation.

Luckily, after discovering Visio's VDX data format was essentially the hierarchical relationships between library shapes expressed in XML, my workable solution involved just mimicking that data file format using Office VBA together with a bit of XMLT.

Then, soon afterwards in 2004, Microsoft released VXD royalty free as 'DatadiagramML'. And the following documentation I could have done with! Grrrr...

Overview of DatadiagramML :
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff768582(v=office.14).asp

I did take a later look at VSDX, the new XML format of Visio 2003, and found it so different. I doubt I would have been able to recreate that file as easily as I did with VDX.

Introduction to the Visio file format (.vsdx) : https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj228622.aspx

Now come forward to Visio 2013 and I sadly find VDX / DatadiagramML is no longer supported!

Aye, things move on yet again! :(