Last Sunday’s New York Times had an interesting article on the front page about digital textbooks for the K-12 market. The piece was undoubtedly partially inspired by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (he’s from California by the way) recently announced initiative that will replace some high school textbooks with digital versions. In fact, compared to standard printed […]
The Industry Has Spoken… For us at Altova, being recognized by our industry peers is an honor and something we are proud of and want to share with all of you – our current and future customers. This summer Altova was named to both the 2009 SD Times 100 and Visual Studio Magazine Readers’ Choice […]
The biggest hurdle for a lot of people (myself included) when they first start looking at XBRL is the vocabulary used in the specification. There is, of course, some overlap with terminology from the XML and business reporting worlds – handy for the handful of you with a background in both – but some of […]
We recently posted a new, five-minute XBRL Overview video on YouTube! Please check it out and let us know what you think!
When mapping HL7 EDI components, it is often necessary to add locally-defined information, or z-segments, to accommodate additional fields not included in the standard. Following is a simple walkthrough that will demonstrate how to add z-segments to the HL7 configuration files that are available as a free download with MapForce. In the example below we […]
We have recently updated Altova’s MissionKit XBRL online training course, which debuted in May, to make the XBRL filing process as accessible to accountants and financial professionals as it is to more technical users. The new course includes easily identifiable “Accountant’s Notes” to make key XBRL concepts more transferable for those with an accounting […]
Having recently returned from a short visit to the 19th XBRL International Conference in Paris, I can’t help but think that many organizations are simply missing the point – and that perhaps the SEC mandate is partly to blame for this. One would think (well, I thought, anyway) that in the year following the issuance […]
XMLSpy and the other tools in the Altova MissionKit are well-known in the development community as the go-to toolset for XML, data integration, UML, and database development projects. But Altova tools are also used by IT professionals to efficiently complete a variety of enterprise support tasks: XMLSpy is an advanced tool that makes XML documents […]
Java-powered robots, Java mobile phone apps, Java in the cloud, Java running Neil Young’s ’59 Lincoln, a new T-shirt, and photos with Duke! It can only mean the annual pilgrimage to the Moscone Center in San Francisco for JavaOne. XMLSpy and MapForce feature Java code generation and UModel can both generate and reverse engineer Java […]
Overview The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, is a division of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), the largest of the United States Navy’s five systems commands. They approached Wrycan, an Altova partner focused on content-centric XML expertise, for help converting some of their legacy format technical manuals to XML based on the Navy ETM […]
The following post is written by Peter Reynolds, CEO and translation management consultant at TM-Global and Executive Director of Kilgray Translation Technologies. An Irish national based in Warsaw, he holds a BSc and an MBA degree from Open University and is a localization and translation industry veteran. Peter previously worked at Idiom Technologies Inc. — […]
The Altova team is packing up and heading out to San Francisco for JavaOne next week. We hope you’ll stop by our booth #209 to chat about what you’re working on, and see a demo of the MissionKit, the integrated suite of XML, database, and UML tools that includes the XMLSpy XML editor, MapForce data […]
We’re very excited to have just launched the next free Altova Online Training course: MissionKit XBRL! This comprehensive, five-module course provides an overview of XBRL and the Altova MissionKit for beginning and advanced technical users. After an introduction to XBRL and the XBRL filing process, you will learn to create an extension taxonomy in the […]
If you missed Microsoft Tech Ed in Los Angeles last week, check out our latest YouTube video for a quick trip to catch up on some of the sights and sounds of the Partner Exhibition. Our team on the scene reported a strong positive response to the XBRL and HL7 functionality in Version 2009 of […]
v2009 brought a lot of exciting new features to StyleVision, Altova’s graphical stylesheet design tool. Some, like an all-new design for tables and XPath filtering, are welcome byproducts of our support for XBRL and XBRL Dimensions, but still have far reaching uses for working with XML and databases. Let’s take a quick look at StyleVision’s […]
The Altova team is kicking off our tradeshow year by exhibiting at Microsoft Tech*Ed 2009 in Los Angeles, CA, May 11–15! If you are attending, be sure to stop by booth #355, where we would be happy to give you a demo of the latest product updates, including our new XBRL tools. We will […]
The hardships affecting today’s economy present new challenges for organizations. Interdepartmental budgets are being cut, and large purchases are being carefully scrutinized. Costly enterprise software and mainframe computing systems that once held promise are being reconsidered on a global scale in favor of more agile, component-based systems that cut costs and increase efficiency with forward-thinking […]
Last week, while giving a demo of the new XBRL capabilities in the Altova MissionKit, we stumbled across an interesting question: What is the best way for a semi-technical SME (in this case a CPA) to navigate a large XML/XBRL document for data entry? XMLSpy, which is included in the MissionKit tool suite, has a […]
Teach DiffDog a New Trick You can easily train DiffDog, Altova’s diff/merge tool for files, directories, and databases, to correctly interpret new file types. For instance, more and more file standards are taking advantage of the Zip compression format to deliver entire sets of files in a single convenient package. Let’s say you want to […]
We are very excited to announce that the Altova MissionKit won the Jolt Product Excellence Award for Best Development Environment last night! Lauded as the "Oscars of the Software Development Industry," the Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards are presented each year to products that have "jolted" the industry with their significance and made the […]
It feels like we’ve been writing about XBRL and HL7 for months… Let’s move away from that topic for the moment and talk about additional essential new functionality added to MapForce in the v2009 release. Granted, some of these features have been added as a necessity for mapping to/from multi-dimensional XBRL data, but they also […]
By now, you may be aware of the global push that is being made for data transparency – both in the realm of financial reporting* with a recent XBRL mandate in the U.S., and electronic health records – and that these efforts are focused on the creation and maintenance of XML standards. Of course most […]
The recently launched UModel 2009 includes new features that will help development teams of all sizes take maximum advantage of UML software modeling. Support for version control systems You can use version control to manage UModel project files and generated source code files. Over two dozen popular source code systems are supported. Check out the […]
To an Altova MissionKit user, it probably comes as no surprise that the majority of the new features in our latest (v2009) release were based on customer requests – yeah, that’s how we roll. But we also had the opportunity to build a lot of new functionality into the MissionKit tools, specifically XMLSpy, MapForce, and […]
Earlier this week we blogged about the release of Version 2009 of Altova MissionKit, which includes the complete Altova product line. One of the major themes in this latest release is comprehensive support for XBRL across multiple Altova MissionKit tools, so lets look into XBRL itself and the new functionality in more detail. What is […]
Recordare® is a technology company focused on providing software and services to the musical community. Their flagship products, the Dolet® plugin family, are platform-independent plugins for popular music notation programs, facilitating the seamless exchange and interaction of sheet music data files by leveraging MusicXML. Dolet acts as a high quality translator between the MusicXML data […]
I’m pleased to announce that the next module in the Altova Online Training Series on the MapForce data mapping tool is now available. MapForce Code Generation is an advanced-level course that provides step-by-step tutorials for generating program code (including C# , C++, Java, XSLT, and XQuery) based on graphically defined data mappings and integrating that […]
We’ve just released a new Altova Online Training Module: Introduction to StyleVision. This free training module provides an introduction to the StyleVision stylesheet design tool interface and functionality as well as interactive tutorials for transforming XML and database content into eye-catching HTML pages, RTF documents, PDF reports, Word 2007 (OOXML) documents, and intuitive Authentic® forms. […]
We received an exciting piece of news that brightened a cold winter day when snow was in the forecast: The Altova MissionKit has been selected as a finalist for the 2009 Jolt Award in the Development Environment category. And it gets even better: Altova DatabaseSpy as a standalone application has also been selected as a […]
The US presidential election might be over, but your votes are still needed! Altova DatabaseSpy and Altova XMLSpy are finalists in the 2009 Developer.com Product of the Year Awards. We’d like to ask for your vote to help show your support for Altova tools. Please cast your vote for Altova DatabaseSpy in the “Database Tool […]
The Altova team exhibited at Microsoft PDC (Professional Developers Conference) in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago. PDC is billed as a tradeshow for “leading-edge developers and software architects,” and, true to its promise, this event delivered a crowd of high level technology professionals. We enjoying catching up with a large number of current […]
The Altova team is busy preparing to head to LA and exhibit at next week’s Microsoft PDC (Professional Developers Conference) 2008. If you’re attending, be sure to stop by and visit us at booth #711, where we’d be happy to show you a demo of the Altova MissionKit tools for .NET developers working on XML, […]
Andrew Binstock, principal analyst at Pacific Data Works, recently published a great article in SD Times about some of the software tools he relies on to make his life easier. In “Integration Watch: Remember good tools at low cost?” he notes: “Today, of course, tools are either free or terribly expensive; there is little middle […]
The Altova team exhibited at Oracle OpenWorld 2008 in San Francisco last week. The exhibit halls were packed, and we were happy to have a steady stream of visitors to our booth. We had the pleasure of talking with many Altova customers as well as other Oracle users and developers interested in Altova XML, database, […]
Just a quick note to let you know that Service Pack 2 of Altova Software Version 2008 Release 2 (2008r2 SP2) is now available… This service pack includes bug fixes and other enhancements and is a free update for all 2008r2 customers, as well as any customer with an active Altova Support and Maintenance Package. […]
Check out the case study below to learn how leading US credit reporting entity Equifax® built an advanced SOAP interface for their identity verification and authentication Web service. Overview Equifax is a leading credit reporting entity and provider of analytical and decision support tools. Their real-time authentication system, eIDverifier, offers government and businesses personalized online […]
Fitz and Floyd is a leader in design and manufacture of hand painted ceramic gift ware. In 2007, they approached Wrycan, an Altova partner focused on content-centric XML expertise and related software development, for help creating a solution that would allow Fitz and Floyd to interface their existing CRM system to their new Web-based storefront […]
Check out the review that T. Michael Testi just posted on Blogcritics.org — it has excellent information about and screenshots of Altova StyleVision. Testi has a long list of other software and book reviews if you’re interested in reading more.
Rapid globalization has had a profound effect on the documentation requirements of many forward-thinking companies. The need to quickly and accurately localize content for distribution to a host of different languages, while at the same time adhering to strict budgetary requirements, means that many companies have to rethink their legacy documentation technologies and workflows. XML […]
Microsoft TechEd 2008 is presently underway in Orlando, FL, and this year the show has been split into two separate events: TechEd for Developers is coming to an end tomorrow, and next week we have TechEd for IT Professionals. Altova is sponsoring both events and we invite you to visit us at booth# 1114 to […]
Altova CEO, Alexander Falk posted the following article on his XML Aficionado blog today on how to use MapForce to create Excel 2007 documents programmatically: XML Aficionado: Creating Open XML (OOXML) Spreadsheet Documents
Altova exhibited at JavaOne 2008 this year, talking with attendees about their projects and challenges, and showing them demos of relevant features in the Altova product line. In particular, booth visitors were interested in learning about Altova’s support for Java code generation in multiple tools, as well as the new Microsoft® Office 2007 / Office […]
Altova, (www.altova.com) creator of the industry-leading XMLSpy XML Editor and other leading XML, data management, UML, and Web services tools, recently announced the availability of Altova XMLSpy Version 2008 Release 2 (v2008r2). The latest release of XMLSpy provides many new enhancements to help users optimize their XML development processes, including support for very large files, […]
This article originally appeared on the XML Aficionado blog of Altova CEO, Alexander Falk. The latest release 2008r2 of StyleVision gives users important new functionality for creating advanced stylesheets to publish XML and database data in Word 2007, which uses the new Open XML (OOXML) data format, as well as simpler processes for publishing the […]
Altova, (www.altova.com) creator of the industry-leading XMLSpy XML Editor and other leading XML, data management, UML, and Web services tools, today announced the availability of Altova StyleVision Version 2008 Release 2 (v2008r2). The latest update to StyleVision provides users with numerous features and enhancements, including capabilities for generating output in Microsoft® Word 2007, which uses […]
(Altova today announced the availability of Version 2008 Release 2 (v2008r2) of its award-winning line of software tools. The release of v2008r2 adds a host of new features and enhancements to Altova’s product line, including support for working with very large files in XMLSpy, extended Office Open XML (OOXML) functionality across multiple products, support for […]
Altova, (www.altova.com) creator of the industry-leading XMLSpy XML Editor and other leading XML, data management, UML, and Web services tools, today announced that Altova XMLSpy has received the 2007 Programmer’s Paradise Riding the Crest® Award in the XML Tools category. Programmer’s Paradise®, a subsidiary of Wayside Technology Group&tm;, Inc., is the leading independent marketer of […]
StyleVision is Altova’s visual stylesheet designer for publishing XML and database data in PDF and other formats. Limitations in the design of the Apache FOP processor cause TrueType fonts to be unavailable for PDF generation. This tip for creating TrueType font metrics files, along with the downloadable scripts, provides StyleVision users with a workaround for […]
A recent article in Database Trends & Applications magazine highlights how MapForce, Altova’s graphical mapping, conversion, and integration tool is working behind the scenes for LANSA Composer to give non-technical users the power to perform business process automation tasks. LANSA, a software company offering a development environment for application generation and integration on multiple computer […]
Altova, (www.altova.com) creator of the industry-leading XMLSpy XML Editor and other leading XML, data management, UML, and Web services tools, today announced that Altova XMLSpy, and the Altova MissionKit received 2007 ComponentSource Bestselling Product Awards. Altova was also presented with the Top 25 Bestselling Publisher Award.