LibraryXML Engines

Recent tests show that the core XML processing functionality in Altova tools outperforms Saxon by more than three times. Read on to learn more and discover why AltovaXML is the choice of the majority of developers today.

The AltovaXML family of XML standards processors powers Altova’s award-winning XML development tools, including XMLSpy. With more than 2 million users worldwide, XMLSpy is clearly the industry-standard XML development environment, and its core processing engines have been the de facto standard in the industry for the past seven years. This provides two immediate benefits for you: first, you can feel confident that AltovaXML is the choice of virtually all Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies for good reasons, and second, this ensures that you will see continued support, rapid innovation, and up-to-the-minute standards support in all Altova products and processors. In addition, because Altova’s state-of-the-art XML engines are also available in the free AltovaXML standards processor, loads of Altova customers implement these same engines they rely on in their development work in their own real-world applications.

Echoing their widespread industry acceptance, the AltovaXML processors have been recognized with many industry awards, including “Best XSLT Processor” and several other “Product of the Year” awards.

AltovaXML is based completely on W3C standards. Altova does not use any of the proprietary add-on functions or non-standard extensions that are often employed by competing engines, such as proprietary “deployment adapters”.

Altova's core XML functions have a track record of always supporting the latest XML-related standards since the inception of XML itself. This provides Altova customers with the ability to stay on the cutting-edge of technology and utilize new standards early on, instead of having to wait until some general-purpose, third-party engine gets updated.

The AltovaXML processor is more than three times faster than Saxon. In a test of a selection of 1,127 test files from the official W3C test suite for XSLT 2.0, the same files AltovaXML processed in 6 minutes 42 seconds took Saxon a full 22 minutes to process. (Further details about test methods and metrics can be found below.) This makes an unbelievable difference in developer productivity as well as application optimization.

Developers around the world utilize the AltovaXML engines when architecting their mission-critical XML and Web services applications with Altova tools. And, since Altova also makes its XML processing engines available for royalty-free use in custom applications, developers can deploy the very same processors that drive their development work in their own software at no additional cost.

This is in stark contrast to competitors that charge for each processor deployed. Saxon, for example, charges $250 per computer for schema-aware XSLT 2.0 processing. Sure, you can get a watered-down, free version of Saxon that does not support schema-awareness in XSLT 2.0, but you’d be missing out on one of the main benefits of working with the new 2.0 spec in the first place.

AltovaXML provides complete, schema-aware XSLT 2.0 processing royalty-free to an unlimited number of seats. The XQuery processor built into AltovaXML is also free and schema-aware.

Another competitor requires you to spend up to $2000 per processor for the “adaptors” needed to deploy their proprietary technologies. This expense not only drastically limits scalability; it also ties you into a non-standard solution that all but eliminates future flexibility.

With AltovaXML, you’re assured a standards-based, non-proprietary solution with no strings attached.

The Altova development team is comprised of highly skilled engineers who have designed the AltovaXML processors from the ground up. Our engineers work to implement the latest W3C standards as soon as they’re released. This, combined with swift reactions to customer feedback, helps make the AltovaXML engines the most up-to-date and efficient available. This is not the case with competitors who rely only on external engines in their products. These competitors have no control over the engines’ update schedules nor their optimization for real-world implementations.

The AltovaXML engines are designed and are constantly being updated with real-world usage in mind. AltovaXML development is not driven by ivory-tower academics or students experimenting with open source projects. Rather, AltovaXML is designed by Altova’s seasoned engineers who understand performance requirements and practical application needs. After all, they use these very same engines in their development work every day.

Listening to our customers and implementing standards quickly and completely has produced tangible results: AltovaXML is more than 3 times faster than Saxon in real-world scenarios.

Altova understands that project requirements differ and in some circumstances may require the use of other engines. In addition to providing the AltovaXML engines in all its XML tools and making it available as a separate download for royalty-free use, Altova allows you to connect to and use third-party XSLT and xsl:fo processors in XMLSpy. In the end, the choice is yours. And isn’t that the way it should be?

See for yourself why the AltovaXML engines are the de facto industry standard trusted by more than 2 million developers around the world. Download a free trial of XMLSpy or any of Altova’s XML development tools. Or, download the AltovaXML standards processor and use it free in your own applications.

Details about internal AltovaXML and Saxon performance testing:

• Test platform: Windows PC with a 3 GHz P4 CPU and 2 GB RAM
• Files used for testing: a selection of 1,127 test files from the official W3C test suite for XSLT 2.0
• Test method: a single shell script (batch file) calling the engine being tested once for each test file and measuring the overall time for the entire execution of the batch run
• Tests performed using the following versions: AltovaXML v2007 vs. Saxon-SA 8.7J (using Java 1.5.0_06)
• Test result processing times: Saxon = 22 minutes, AltovaXML = 6 minutes 46 seconds