XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is an open, XML-based standard for the electronic submission of business and financial data. Though XBRL specifies what data must be reported and provides a standardized way of doing so, companies and regulatory agencies need a way to ensure the quality of data that is submitted. One approach is by using business rule validation, and XULE is one method that is growing in popularity in 2025.
Docker has revolutionized how developers build, ship, and run applications by offering a lightweight, portable solution for containerizing software. Containers package applications with all their dependencies, ensuring they run consistently across different environments, whether on a developer’s machine, a test server, or in the cloud. Compared to traditional virtual machines, Docker containers are faster to start, consume fewer resources, and make scaling applications easier. This efficiency has made Docker a go-to tool for software development and deployment.
Running Altova Server Software in Docker brings these benefits to enterprise-level data processing and automation tasks. By containerizing tools like FlowForce Server, MapForce Server, or RaptorXML Server, developers get a highly portable, scalable, and efficient solution for managing complex workflows as well as automating data transformations, validation, and report generation.
To make getting started even easier, Altova offers an open-source project for automating the set-up process in a Docker environment.
The latest release of Altova desktop developer tools, server software, and regulatory solutions introduces a host of productivity-boosting features across the product line, as well as updated support for standards, databases, and integration with popular IDEs.
Let’s take a look at the highlights.
The latest release of Altova desktop developer tools and server software products introduces support for the newest JSON Schema versions in all JSON-enabled products. This adds to support for previous versions of the JSON Schema specification.
Altova FlowForce Server is a high-performance workflow engine for automating enterprise-level data processing, data integration, and ETL jobs.
FlowForce Server includes a helpful web interface for managing and monitoring all aspects of data processing jobs, including in-depth logging functionality and a complete visual dashboard. Let’s take a look at how you can take advantage of FlowForce charts and statistics to monitor the progress of FlowForce Server jobs, as well as performance of the server itself, in great detail.
Have you ever struggled with replacing an expiring software license because production in your organization runs 24/7? Maybe your biggest fear is that the application will stop running? Fear not – I will walk you through the replacement process so you can avoid any interruptions in service.
Though using the Altova LicenseServer is straightforward, there are a couple of tricks and tips that will make your life easier. For this post, my goal is to walk you through the process of replacing an expiring license. Be it a standalone or centralized license server, replacement is fast and easy. And we will complete the replacement of the license without any downtime to the application(s) being served.
In the latest release of Altova desktop developer tools and server software products, we’re introducing a completely rebuilt XML Grid View, support for XSLT3 for XML data mapping, statistics and charts for monitoring FlowForce Server, and much more. Let’s take a look at the highlights of Altova Software Version 2021 Release 2.
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.
Many enterprises and business situations leverage Microsoft Word documents in standardized formats, with variations in content in subsequent versions. Think of contracts or other legal documents, status reports, test results, lists of rules, and many others. These documents may even be generated through automated processes. Manually identifying and reporting changes between versions would be a cumbersome process. Altova DiffDog Server provides an efficient, automated solution.
DiffDog Server brings the file and directory comparison power of Altova DiffDog to high-performance servers, making it easy to automate Word document comparison and generate diff reports comparing files, directories, or URLs, and even Word documents (.docx) saved in MS Office versions 2007 or later.
Let’s look at a Word document comparison.
FlowForce Server is Altova’s high-performance engine for automating workflows of XML processing, data integration, report generation, and more. It integrates with other Altova server software products to automate their functions, such as executing complex data integration processes, including ETL projects, designed in MapForce; running StyleVision report generation jobs; or validating XML, XBRL, or JSON files with RaptorXML Server.
Starting with Version 2019, FlowForce Server offers new options for distributed execution and load balancing to improve availability and performance. Let’s take a look at how configuring multiple FlowForce Servers to run as a cluster can help improve data throughput and provide redundancy.
