Altova Blog - News from Altova, including XMLSpy XML Editor, SQL, UML, Data Integration, and Mobile Tools

An Easy Way to Test HTTP Requests During Development

February 19, 2020/0 Comments/in Development, JSON, XML data, grid view, home page, http command, http requests, http window, import wizard, request, requests, rest api, send, services, soap web, testing, testing and debugging, web, web server, web services, window, xmlspy /by Erin Cavanaugh

Web and web services developers often need to send HTTP requests – whether for testing APIs, testing REST and SOAP web services, or managing web sites.

XMLSpy makes it easy to send and receive HTTP requests directly in the XML and JSON editor during development with its HTTP Window and WADL/WSDL Import Wizard, a great time-saving tool for debugging web services.

How to Create Fillable PDF Forms

February 12, 2020/0 Comments/in Development, Software data, design tool, fillable pdf, fillable pdf form, fillable pdf forms, form creation, form data, form design, forms, input fields, intake form, multi-line input fields, patient intake, patient intake form, pdf, pdf form, pdf forms, stylevision, stylevision server, word form /by Erin Cavanaugh

Compared to traditional paper forms, fillable PDF forms offer numerous benefits – aside from saving trees – including removing issues with legibility, allowing data validation, reducing re-keying errors, and streamlining information storage and re-use.

I, for one, really wish my kids’ school would switch to PDF forms for the myriad back-to-school information pages that we fill out in triplicate every fall. Perhaps I can give the administrators a demo of StyleVision, which just added support for fillable PDF form creation.

Unlike other PDF form design tools, however, StyleVision also provides form workflow functionality via integration with StyleVision Server for extracting and processing the data that end users enter. Let’s take a look at how it works.

PDF Forms

Create Free Surveys with SurveyMaker

January 28, 2020/in App Development, apps altova, altova surveymaker, analyzing results, app, attractive, build, create, device, device of choice, easy to create, offers, professional, professional surveys, results, survey, survey results, surveymaker, surveys, users, web browser /by Erin Cavanaugh

Digital surveys are a great way to solicit and gather feedback. An attractive, well designed survey that’s quick and easy for users to complete increases response rates and can be the key to unlocking valuable, actionable information from prospects, customers, employees, and beyond.

Altova SurveyMaker makes it easy to create full-featured, professional surveys quickly and easily. What’s more, it offers the flexibility to build surveys and analyze real-time results on your device of choice, via an app for iPhone, iPad, Android phone or tablet, Windows computer, or via any web browser.

Create free surveys with the SurveyMaker app

Software Design Templates in Mobile Development Projects

January 21, 2020/in App Development, Mobile, Tools app, check box, combo box, control, control template, control templates, cross-platform mobile apps, design, design templates, generate the list, list of cities, list of countries, mobiletogether designer, mobiletogether designer includes, radio buttons, set of radio, software design, software design templates, table with dynamic columns, template /by David McGahey

Software design templates streamline mobile app development by eliminating implementation of repetitive components. Creating a design template also simplifies revisions and upgrades when a change to the template can roll through an entire project.

MobileTogether supports software design templates for user controls in cross-platform mobile apps to facilitate design reuse and make it easy to build efficient, flexible options for various app requirements.

A Control Template in MobileTogether is a design component that allows developers to specify and group user controls in a way that makes them easily reusable. Control Templates support parameters, and each template can be customized based on parameter values at runtime.

Let’s look at an example.

Embedding Images in XML

January 15, 2020/in Development, JSON, XML check box, create element, create element check, create element check box, document, element, element check, element check box, embed, encoded, encoded text, external, external files, file, files, json, text, text view, xml, xml document /by Erin Cavanaugh

One of the really cool features added to XMLSpy a few years ago based on customer requests is the ability to embed external files – such as images – directly in an XML document as encoded text. This gives you the option to package all required data from various external files together in one large XML document. The functionality is also available for embedding images in JSON documents.

Let’s take a look at how easy it is to accomplish this in the XML and JSON editor in just a few steps.

Photo for embedding images

Tags: JSON, JSON editor, XML, XML Editor, XMLSpy

CbC Reporting Made Easy

December 8, 2019/in apps, Data Integration, Mobile, MobileTogether altova cbc, altova cbc reporting, altova cbc reporting solution, built-in data validation, cbc, cbc report, cbc reporting, cbc reporting solution, data entry, entered data, excel, excel template, manually entered data, report, report data, report data tab, reporting, reporting solution, solution, xml /by Erin Cavanaugh

A recent mandate from the OECD called on large, multinational companies to report financials annually for each country in which they do business to their local tax authority. The OECD specified that this detailed Country by Country (CbC) Report be filed in an XML document according to their reporting schema. But for tax departments that work largely in Excel or other accounting software, this presented a significant stumbling block – and companies found themselves scrambling to meet the requirements by the deadline.

What was needed is a way to automatically generate valid, properly formatted CbC XML reports based on existing data. Altova created the Country by Country Reporting Solution to do just that, either based on manually entered data or figures imported directly from Excel. Let’s take a look at how it works.

Transitioning Data Mapping Projects from Development through Testing and Production

November 29, 2019/in Data Integration, Database mapping, Servers, Software data, data mapping, data mapping project, data mapping projects, file, file and the target database, flowforce server, global, global resource, global resource configuration, global resources, global resources configuration, global resources file, mapforce server, mapforce server command, mapforce server command line, mapforce server execution, mapforce server execution file, server execution file, source data file /by David McGahey

Data mapping projects often mirror software development efforts with distinct phases for design, testing, and deployment. This is especially true for ETL (Extract Transform Load) projects when repeated data mapping execution is required as new data becomes available, and the stakes increase higher with large data sets. The Altova MissionKit and Server Software products provide Global Resources to define configurations for each project phase and smoothly transition between them.

Let’s take a look at an example based on a MapForce data mapping from a source file to a database.