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XML, DATA MANAGEMENT, UML, AND WEB SERVICES TOOLS PROVIDE SUPPORT FOR OFFICE OPEN XML, MULTI-PURPOSE IDEs, ENHANCED DATABASE FUNCTIONALITY, AND MORE

BEVERLY, Mass., September 12, 2007 – Altova® (www.altova.com), creator of the industry-leading XMLSpy® XML editor and other popular XML, data management, UML, and Web services tools, today announced the availability of Version 2008 (v2008) of its award-winning line of software development tools. With the release of its v2008 products, Altova introduces a host of powerful new capabilities, including support for the Windows Vista operating system across the product line, extended support for Office Open XML file formats in XMLSpy, more data mapping versatility in MapForce, and enhanced database functionality in StyleVision. Additionally, this new software version brings Visual Basic .NET code engineering and real-time integration with Visual Studio and Eclipse in UModel, support for editing database views and stored procedures in DatabaseSpy, one-click directory synchronization in DiffDog, and much more.

“It’s major product and feature enhancements like these that keep Altova customers ahead of the technology curve and give them real productivity advantages,” said Tim Hale, Director of Worldwide Marketing for Altova. “Our record of delivering superior products with unparalleled functionality has earned us over three million registered users and keeps organizations turning to Altova products for their software development and data management needs.”

New in XMLSpy 2008

Altova XMLSpy is the world’s best-selling XML editor and the industry standard XML development environment for modeling, editing, transforming, and debugging XML-related technologies. New features in XMLSpy 2008 include:

• Extended support for Office Open XML (OOXML) – With support for OOXML in XMLSpy 2008, users can extract, edit, query, and transform XML data from within Microsoft Word, Excel, and now PowerPoint 2007 files, enabling them to repurpose and re-use the vast amount of data being created in the new Microsoft Office 2007 default file formats.
• Data editing in Database Query window – Through the new SQL editing capabilities in XMLSpy’s Database Query window users can now edit data, review the changed fields, and commit the changes back to the database. This new functionality makes working with database content in XMLSpy 2008 more seamless than ever.
• Evaluating XPath expressions across multiple files – The unique XPath Analyzer window in XMLSpy 2008 lets users execute and view the results of XPath expressions across multiple files simultaneously and enables them to compose, test, and troubleshoot XPath expressions with ease. Separate tabs for storing and evaluating expressions allow developers to make changes and re-evaluate expressions without retyping them.
• Support for XInclude and XPointer – XMLSpy 2008 provides support for the W3C standards, XInclude (XML Inclusions) and XPointer (the XML Pointer Language). Through helpful dialogs XMLSpy users are now able to select entire documents or document fragments using XPointer, and include them in a file using XInclude.

Learn more about all the features in XMLSpy 2008 at: http://www.altova.com/xmlspy

The new OOXML, XInclude, and XPointer capabilities are also supported in AltovaXML, a FREE XML processor that includes Altova’s XSLT 1.0 and schema-aware XSLT 2.0 engine, XQuery engine, and XML validating parser.

Learn more about AltovaXML 2008 at: http://www.altova.com/altovaxml.html

New in MapForce 2008

Altova MapForce is the premier data mapping, conversion and integration tool. It maps any combination of XML, database, flat file, EDI, and/or Web service, then converts data instantly or generates royalty-free data integration applications for recurrent conversions. New enhancements in MapForce 2008 include:

• Aggregate data processing functions – The MapForce function library now includes aggregate functions that allow users to perform computations on a range of data within a source field and return a unified value to the target. New functions calculate the sum, minimum, maximum, and average of a group of data, or join values from multiple fields together, bringing even more functionality to the graphical MapForce data mapping interface.
• ValueMap function for transforming field values – With MapForce 2008 users can now build data processing functions that transform the values of an input field into a different set of result data. For example, if months are represented by numbers in the mapping source, the numbers can be changed to correspond to the month names in the target. This new capability adds more versatility for mapping XML, databases, flat file, EDI, and Web Services data.
• Enhanced options for XML output – New options for customizing the XML output generated when mapping data to an XML file are available in MapForce 2008. Users can now enable pretty-printing of generated XML output or they can omit XML Schemas/DTD references when a schema isn’t available to the end user of the output. The encoding of the output (e.g., ASCII, UTF-8) can also now be changed for each XML target in a mapping.

Learn more about all the features in MapForce 2008 at: http://www.altova.com/mapforce

New in StyleVision 2008

Altova StyleVision is the ultimate visual stylesheet designer for transforming XML and database content into HTML pages, PDF reports, Word/RTF documents, and creating Altova Authentic electronic forms. New capabilities in StyleVision 2008 include:

• Support for Modular StyleVision designs – StyleVision 2008 makes it possible to re-use portions of existing design files when creating new designs. Users can simply add an existing StyleVision stylesheet as a module in the Design Tree, and its constructs can then be used in the new design. This makes it possible to collaborate and re-use portions of existing stylesheets to quickly create new designs.
• New Database Connection wizard – The same user-friendly database connection wizard featured in XMLSpy, MapForce, and DatabaseSpy is now available in StyleVision 2008, simplifying its use in styling relational database content into HTML, PDF, Word/RTF, and Authentic forms.
• Database Query window – StyleVision 2008 includes a new Database Query window, enabling users to query a database using SQL or SQL/XML statements. A Database Browser pane displays the connection information and database tables, a SQL Editor pane makes writing accurate queries easy, and the Results pane clearly displays the returned data. The StyleVision Database Query window provides users with a quick user-friendly way to view database data while creating stylesheet designs to publish eye-catching output from the database content.

Learn more about all the features in StyleVision 2008 at: http://www.altova.com/stylevision

New in UModel 2008

Altova UModel is the simple cost-effective way to draw on UML. It lets users visually design application models and generate code or reverse engineer programs into UML diagrams. The new features in UModel 2008 include:

• Tight integration with Visual Studio and Eclipse – The new UModel Enterprise Edition integrates with and operates inside the Visual Studio and Eclipse IDEs. New functionality includes automatic, real-time synchronization that allows developers to instantly see the impact of application revisions, whether implemented in the model or directly in code in a source code editor.
• Support for Visual Basic .NET code engineering – In addition to Java and C#, UModel 2008 now supports code engineering for Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) versions 7.1 (2003) and 8.0 (2005). VB.NET users will recognize the opportunity to increase development efficiency by taking advantage of UModel’s intuitive and straightforward software modeling and code generation functionality. Additionally, they will be able to reuse existing modules by applying UModel reverse engineering to the application code.

Learn more about all the features in UModel 2008 at: http://www.altova.com/umodel

New in DatabaseSpy 2008

Altova DatabaseSpy is the unique multi-database query and design tool that connects to all major databases and eases SQL editing and database design. New enhancements in DatabaseSpy 2008 include:

• Creating and editing database views – Expanding on its support for querying database views, DatabaseSpy 2008 users can now create and edit database views. A view is a stored query that returns a customized subset of data from one or more database tables for convenient access, and the ability to add and modify views greatly enhances DatabaseSpy’s usefulness.
• Creating and editing stored procedures – Adding to its robust feature set, DatabaseSpy 2008 enables users to create, edit, and execute stored procedures. Stored procedures allow faster execution of sets of multiple SQL statements and are used to optimize repetitive database queries and regular operations, making this an important new capability for database administrators and developers.
• Database content editing – With DatabaseSpy 2008 users are able to retrieve and edit content in existing database tables, add rows to insert new data, or delete entire rows. Edits to the content are made locally in the data preview window, but aren’t applied to the database until the user clicks a special Commit button. This permits users to review changes before applying them to the database, minimizing the occurrence of errors.

Learn more about all the features in DatabaseSpy 2008 at: http://www.altova.com/databasespy

New in DiffDog 2008

Altova DiffDog is a unique synchronization tool that quickly compares text, source code, and XML files and diverse directories then highlights differences and merges content via its straightforward visual interface. New capabilities in DiffDog 2008 include:

• Enhanced directory merge functionality – New folder sync options in DiffDog 2008 enable users to update/merge entire folders, including subfolders in a single step. Users can now also skip the steps of reviewing and merging differences individually.
• Binary file comparison – DiffDog 2008 now examines and compares the content, as well as file size and modification dates, of binary files during directories comparisons. Image files, compiled application executables, or binary-based documents created by any application are all accurately processed, increasing the efficiency of directory differencing.

Learn more about all the features in DiffDog2008 at: http://www.altova.com/diffdog

New in SchemaAgent 2008

Altova SchemaAgent is the visionary tool for analyzing and managing XML Schema, XML instance, XSLT, and WSDL file relationships across a project or an enterprise. New functionality in SchemaAgent 2008 includes:

• Visualizing and managing XSLT and WSDL file relationships – SchemaAgent 2008 provides important new functionality for visualizing, managing, and modeling XSLT and WSDL files. Users can drag XSLT or WSDL files from the SchemaAgent explorer into the design pane. Files are then displayed as graphical components with details on imported or included XSLT or WSDL files, associated XML Schemas, inline schemas, and defined namespaces. With its intelligent drag-and-drop functionality users can even change or create connections. This new functionality makes SchemaAgent 2008 a comprehensive tool for understanding and managing file dependencies across projects, development teams, and enterprises.

Learn more about all the features in SchemaAgent 2008 at: http://www.altova.com/schemaagent

New in SemanticWorks 2008

Altova SemanticWorks is a ground-breaking visual RDF/OWL editor for the Semantic Web. It lets users visually design Semantic Web instance docs, vocabularies, and ontologies then output them in RDF/XML or N-triples code. New features in SemanticWorks 2008 include:

• Editing instances of classes – Now, in addition to viewing and creating instances of RDFS or OWL classes using a graph, SemanticWorks 2008 users can take advantage of the new Details entry helper in SemanticWorks 2008. This makes it easy to select the properties for each instance of a class using context-sensitive drop down menus.

Learn more about all the features in SemanticWorks 2008 at: http://www.altova.com/semanticworks

More information on all the new features supported in Version 2008 of the Altova product line is available at: http://www.altova.com/whatsnew.html

Availability and Pricing

Version 2008 of Altova XMLSpy, MapForce, StyleVision, UModel, DatabaseSpy, DiffDog, SchemaAgent, and SemanticWorks is currently available with pricing starting at (USD) $499, $249, $249, $129, $129, $129, $129, and $129 respectively. These products may be purchased directly from the Altova Online Shop at: https://shop.altova.com

30-day free trials of all Altova products may be downloaded from: http://www.altova.com/download.html

The Altova MissionKit 2008 bundles up to eight Altova products for less than the price of two.* All MissionKits include XMLSpy, MapForce, and StyleVision at substantial savings, plus options are available that add up to five of the other application development, data management, and modeling tools listed above effectively free of charge. The Altova MissionKit is currently available with pricing starting at $740. Learn more about the Altova MissionKit at:http://www.altova.com/missionkit

Altova recommends the purchase of its Support and Maintenance Package (SMP) with all software purchases. Altova SMP provides free software version upgrades, maintenance releases, and priority technical support for the duration of the support period. Learn more at: http://www.altova.com/support_package.html

About Altova

Altova accelerates application development and data management projects with software and solutions that enhance productivity and maximize results. As an innovative, customer-focused company and the creator of XMLSpy and other leading XML, data management, UML, and Web services tools, Altova is the choice of over 3 million clients worldwide, including 91 percent of the Fortune 500. Enabling customers ranging from vast development teams in the world’s largest organizations to progressive one-person shops, Altova’s line of software tools fulfills a broad spectrum of business needs. Altova is an active member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Object Management Group (OMG) and is committed to delivering standards-based platform-independent solutions that are powerful, affordable, and easy to use. Altova was founded in 1992 and has headquarters in Beverly, Massachusetts and Vienna, Austria. Visit Altova on the Web at: http://www.altova.com

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Altova, MissionKit, XMLSpy, MapForce, StyleVision, UModel, DatabaseSpy, DiffDog, SchemaAgent, SemanticWorks, Authentic, and AltovaXML are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Altova GmbH in the United States and/or other countries. The names of and reference to other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.