LibraryStandards Compliance

Altova's product line supports and implements a broad range of standards that are essential for interoperability and connectivity in today's world.

To ensure maximum compatibility with these standards, Altova constantly monitors standards compliance in its QA department and actively participates in various standards bodies.

The following list provides an overview of the major standards implemented and supported in Altova tools.

	Standard		Description and Comments
	XML 1.0 (4th Ed.)		The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a subset of SGML that is completely described in this document from the W3C. Its goal is to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML. XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML.
	Namespaces in XML 1.0 (2nd Ed.)		XML namespaces provide a simple method for qualifying element and attribute names used in Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents by associating them with namespaces identified by URI references.
	XML Infoset 1.0 (2nd Ed.)		XML Information Set (Infoset) provides a set of definitions for use in other specifications that need to refer to the information in an XML document.
	XSLT 1.0		XSLT 1.0 is designed for use as part of XSL, which is a stylesheet language for XML. In addition to XSLT, XSL includes an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting. XSL specifies the styling of an XML document by using XSLT to describe how the document is transformed into another XML document that uses the formatting vocabulary. The rarely used elements xsl:strip-space and xsl:preserve-space are currently ignored.
	XSLT 2.0		XSLT 2.0 is the long-awaited upgrade to XSLT 1.0 and includes important new schema-aware functions, grouping, aggregation, node-set, "for" loops, and much more. For a detailed description of the new capabilities, please see this comparison. The rarely used elements xsl:strip-space and xsl:preserve-space are currently ignored. Also, the attribute input-type-annotations is not yet supported.
	XPath 1.0		XPath 1.0 is a language for addressing parts of an XML document, designed to be used by both XSLT and XPointer.
	XPath 2.0		XPath 2.0 is a superset of [XPath 1.0], with the added capability to support a richer set of data types, and to take advantage of the type information that becomes available when documents are validated using XML Schema. For a detailed description of the new capabilities, please see this comparison.
	XQuery 1.0		An extension of the XPath 2.0 specification, XQuery is a language for extracting information from XML documents and databases.
	XInclude 1.0 (2nd Ed.)		XInclude specifies a processing model and syntax for general purpose inclusion. Inclusion is accomplished by merging a number of XML information sets into a single composite infoset. Specification of the XML documents (infosets) to be merged and control over the merging process is expressed in XML-friendly syntax (elements, attributes, URI references).
	XPointer 1.0		XML Pointer Language (XPointer) is the language to be used as the basis for a fragment identifier for any URI reference that locates a resource whose Internet media type is one of text/xml, application/xml, text/xml-external-parsed-entity, or application/xml-external-parsed-entity.
	XML Schema 1.0 (2nd Ed.)		XML Schema specifies the XML Schema definition language, which offers facilities for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML 1.0 documents, including those which exploit the XML Namespace facility. The schema language, which is itself represented in XML 1.0 and uses namespaces, substantially reconstructs and considerably extends the capabilities found in XML 1.0 document type definitions (DTDs).
	SOAP 1.2		SOAP is a lightweight protocol for exchange of information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It is an XML based protocol that consists of three parts: an envelope that defines a framework for describing what is in a message and how to process it, a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application-defined datatypes, and a convention for representing remote procedure calls and responses. SOAP can potentially be used in combination with a variety of other protocols; however, the only bindings defined in this document describe how to use SOAP in combination with HTTP and HTTP Extension Framework.
	WSDL 1.1		WSDL is an XML format for describing network services as a set of endpoints operating on messages containing either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information. The operations and messages are described abstractly, and then bound to a concrete network protocol and message format to define an endpoint. Related concrete endpoints are combined into abstract endpoints (services). WSDL is extensible to allow description of endpoints and their messages regardless of what message formats or network protocols are used to communicate, however, the only bindings described in this document describe how to use WSDL in conjunction with SOAP 1.1, HTTP GET/POST, and MIME.
	RDF		Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a family of W3C specifications originally designed as a metadata data model, that has come to be used as a general method of modeling information through a variety of syntax formats.
	OWL		The OWL Web Ontology Language is designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans. OWL facilitates greater machine interpretability of Web content than that supported by XML, RDF, and RDF Schema (RDF-S) by providing additional vocabulary along with a formal semantics. OWL has three increasingly-expressive sublanguages: OWL Lite, OWL DL, and OWL Full.
	XML Catalogs		In order to make optimal use of the information about an XML external resource, there needs to be some interoperable way to map the information in an XML external identifier into a URI reference for the desired resource. This OASIS XML Catalog Standard defines an entity catalog that handles two simple cases: Mapping an external entity's public identifier and/or system identifier to a URI reference. Mapping the URI reference of a resource (a namespace name, stylesheet, image, etc.) to another URI reference.
	Unicode 4.1.0		The Unicode Standard, Version 4.1.0, defined by: The Unicode Standard, Version 4.0 (Boston, MA, Addison-Wesley, 2003. ISBN 0-321-18578-1), as amended by Unicode 4.0.1 and Unicode 4.1.0.
	UML 2.2		UML is a graphical language for organizing, analyzing, and planning object-oriented or component-based software projects. The UML 2.2 specification defines thirteen major different diagram types and over one thousand graphical and textual language elements, as well as additional extension mechanisms.
	XMI 2.1		XMI is a model driven XML Integration framework for defining, interchanging, manipulating and integrating XML data and objects. XMI-based standards are in use for integrating tools, repositories, applications and data warehouses. XMI provides rules by which a schema can be generated for any valid XMI-transmissible MOF-based metamodel.
	BPMN 1.0		The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is a graphical notation that depicts the steps in a business process. BPMN depicts the end to end flow of a business process. The notation has been specifically designed to coordinate the sequence of processes and the messages that flow between different process participants in a related set of activities.
	CSS 2.1		CSS 2.1 is a style sheet language that allows authors and users to attach style (e.g., fonts and spacing) to structured documents (e.g., HTML documents and XML applications). By separating the presentation style of documents from the content of documents, CSS 2.1 simplifies Web authoring and site maintenance.
	HTML 4.01		HTML 4 supports more multimedia options, scripting languages, style sheets, better printing facilities, and documents that are more accessible to users with disabilities. HTML 4 also takes great strides towards the internationalization of documents, with the goal of making the Web truly World Wide.
	JavaScript		JavaScript is a scripting language that is often used for client-side Web development to write functions that are embedded or included from HTML pages for dynamic presentation features such as pop-up windows, form validation, and mouse-over effects. JavaScript is a superset of the ECMA-262 Edition 3 (ECMAScript) standard scripting language, with only mild differences from the published standard.
	EDIFACT D 1993A - D 2007B		EDIFACT is a set of United Nations rules for Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport. They comprise a set of internationally agreed standards, directories and guidelines for the electronic interchange of structured data, and in particular that related to trade in goods and services between independent, computerized information systems.
	X12 3040 - 5030		ASC X12 brings together business and industry professionals in a cross-industry forum to develop and support electronic data exchange standards and related documents for the national and international marketplace to enhance business processes, reduce costs and expand organizational reach.
	WebDAV		WebDAV stands for "Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning". It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers.
	SQL		ISO/IEC 9075 defines the SQL database language. The scope of SQL is the definition of data structure and the operations on data stored in that structure. ISO/IEC 9075-1, -2 and -11 encompass the minimum requirements of the language. Other parts define extensions.

Output formats:

	Standard		Description and Comments
	RTF 1.9		The Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification provides a format for text and graphics interchange that can be used with different output devices, operating environments, and operating systems. Version 1.9.1 of the specification contains the latest updates introduced by Microsoft Office Word 2007.
	PDF 1.7		PDF is now a formal open standard known as ISO 32000. Maintained by the International Organization for Standardization, ISO 32000 will continue to be developed with the objective of protecting the integrity and longevity of PDF, providing an open standard for the more than one billion PDF files in existence today.
	XSL:FO		XSL:FO, is a markup language for XML document formatting which is most often used to generate PDFs. XSL:FO is part of XSL, a set of W3C technologies designed for the transformation and formatting of XML data. The other parts of XSL are XSLT and XPath.

By virtue of the extensible nature of XML, this list is far from being complete, since many more XML-based standards are created and published almost on a weekly basis. The Altova products automatically support all these new XML-based standards, because they, too, have been designed to be extensible. Support for any new standard can be easily added through schemas, DTDs, templates, and custom stylesheets by the user.

In addition, Altova constantly monitors new developments in the XML community and adds "out-of-the-box" support for new standards with every new release of its products.