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Altova application development and data management tools support any XML software development project by providing powerful XML editing, profiling, and debugging capabilities. Find out more about XML editing challenges and how Altova XML tools can simplify and accelerate your XML management by following the links below.

The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a specification from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that defines a meta language for describing data. In XML applications, data is described by surrounding it with customizable, text-based tags that provide valuable information about the data itself, while supporting documents describe its appearance, as well as its hierarchical structure.

Because XML syntax consists of self-describing mark-up in text format, it is both application-independent and human readable. This simplicity and interoperability have helped XML achieve widespread acceptance and adoption as the standard for exchanging information between heterogeneous systems in e-business applications, Web services, etc.

A fundamental goal of XML development is ensuring that instance documents conform to certain document-types or schemas so they can be easily exchanged between and understood by different software products or environments. Intelligent XML editing features help tremendously in creating such conformant (i.e., valid) XML documents by using XML Schemas or DTDs to provide consistent feedback about the content model of your document and also by specifying which elements or attributes are permitted in a particular context.

XMLSpy® 2008 includes a revolutionary XML validator that validates the element context you are working on and immediately shows any errors in your element structure. An informative validation window provides granular details about each error, including the reason for the error, a link to the error in the working XML file, a link to the corresponding definition(s) in the associated schema file, and even a link to the specific section of the relevant specification on the W3C Web site.

In addition, the XMLSpy editing views support auto-completion, context-sensitive syntax help, pop-up entry helpers, syntax coloring, and more. These productivity-enhancing features help you develop valid XML documents quickly and easily.

Though XML syntax is simple by design, XML editing covers a gamut of tasks, from the very basic to the highly complex. Whether you’re working with an XML instance document, an XML Schema, an XSLT stylesheet, or any other type of XML file, it’s important to be able to view and manage your work efficiently. For instance, some developers prefer to develop XML Schemas using a graphical interface that lets them visualize relationships between elements, while others are more comfortable hand-coding using a text-based interface. In addition, some developers switch back and forth between views during the development process, using a text view for some tasks, a graphical view for others, and a word processor-style XML editor for others.

XMLSpy provides unprecedented flexibility for XML development by providing a choice of five synchronized XML editing views: Advanced Text View, Grid View, XML Schema/WSDL Design View, Authentic View, and Browser View. You can switch between these different views as required, allowing you to work with XML documents using the tools and options that best apply to your particular project and personal preferences.

Developing XML in a team environment often results in multiple file and directory versions in which differences must be examined and either merged or rejected, a process that is often time consuming and tedious. Developers working in this kind of setting need a powerful differencing utility to quickly identify and merge code, thus saving time otherwise spent editing, troubleshooting, and versioning.

The visual differencing utility of XMLSpy allows you to easily compare and merge XML documents and directories in an intelligent, XML-aware manner. This is ideal for editing XML documents and maintaining directories in team environments.

Altova DiffDog® 2008 also provides intelligent XML-aware differencing capabilities for XML documents and directories. It also supports powerful differencing, editing, and merging capabilities for any type of text-based or binary file, as well as directories that contain any file types.

Visual Studio is the premiere development platform from Microsoft, providing developers with comprehensive tools for designing and building distributed applications for the Windows® platform, the Web, and mobile devices. With the proliferation of XML in these types of applications today, .NET developers need a specialized XML development environment as robust as their general development platform.

XMLSpy includes complete integration with Visual Studio. The free, optional integration package allows developers to harness the power of the world's leading XML development environment seamlessly, in the same application development environment where they build .NET applications.

The Eclipse development environment is an increasingly popular platform for Java development, WebSphere work, and other platform-agnostic development projects. XMLSpy® 2008 includes integration with Eclipse through a free, optional integration package. This allows developers to work with XML using the specialized editing views and XML capabilities of XMLSpy, the industry-standard XML development environment, directly from within Eclipse.

The Eclipse Platform is open source and offered free-of-charge, and is supported in the Enterprise and Professional Editions of XMLSpy® 2008.

XML development projects typically involve multiple XML instance documents and the related XML Schema, DTD, XSL, XQuery, and HTML files. Whether your project includes 10 or 10,000 documents, managing them as a whole can be a challenge. XMLSpy includes a project window for grouping these files into folders to organize your project in a logical, visual manner. This allows you to specify validation and transformation rules, perform batch operations, and much more.

When working on XML documents in a team environment, the importance of regulating file access and version control is paramount. XMLSpy includes support for popular version control systems such as CVS, Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, and others. This allows a team or workgroup to collectively work on a set of XML documents with proper version and access control.

WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a standardized set of extensions to HTTP that allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote Web servers. XMLSpy includes full WebDAV support, allowing you to load, edit, and save XML files directly from any WebDAV-enabled file system, database, or server.

XMLSpy includes complete Unicode support, spell checking, and a great deal of customizable editing settings to make your XML editing experience as productive as possible.

Find out why over 3 million users have chosen XMLSpy® 2008 for their XML editing needs. Download a free 30-day trial today!