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.
The Altova Server Platform is comprised of the complete family of Altova’s high performance server software for automating data processing and data integration workflows. These cross-platform server software products allow for flexible installation either on premises or in any private or public cloud infrastructure.
For customers utilizing the Microsoft Azure cloud, we’ve created a convenient, free VM template with the Altova Server Platform pre-installed for easy deployment, available on the Azure Marketplace.
With YAML becoming increasingly common in configuration files and data exchange, it makes sense for developers to seek out specialized YAML editors to add to their everyday toolkit.
Although YAML is simple, its strict reliance on indentation and formatting can make it prone to errors. Intelligent YAML editors provide features that can make coding faster while minimizing these issues. XMLSpy includes an intelligent, text-based YAML editor as well as a unique YAML Grid view. YAML Grid represents the document structure in a visual way that makes it easier to understand—while unlocking additional functionality for efficient editing.
Let’s take a look at how it works.
The latest version of the Altova product line introduces a host of new features and functionality. Customers now have access to new, visual YAML editing tools, improved options for extracting PDF data for mapping to other formats, updated SQL and NoSQL data integration support, and more.
Whether working with Altova developer tools, server software products, or XBRL add-ins for Excel, this release has something for everyone. Here’s a look at the highlights.
The latest release in Altova’s line of desktop developer tools and server software products includes support for new industry standards, updated database support, and performance optimizations.
With each new product version, we aim to provide customers with a mix of developer-requested features, support for emerging standards, and performance improvements. Version 2024r2 is no different, with tools introduced for working with YAML, FORTRAS EDI, and XBRL Report Packages as well as multiple performance and usability enhancements across the product line.
Here’s a look at the highlights.
Altova MapForce offers a powerful, yet easy-to-use, approach to converting and transforming data. Whether you need to write XML to a database, convert JSON to EDI, or map Excel to multiple different data formats, MapForce has you covered.
From simple one-to-one conversions to complex ETL scenarios, the MapForce approach is to represent data structures as graphical components. To associate fields, drag and drop connecting lines. A comprehensive library of data filters and functions is available for transforming data before writing it to the target.
We have recently revamped our series of Introduction to MapForce videos. Each short how-to gives a demo of a common MapForce scenario.
Start at the beginning to learn how MapForce works:
And follow along to learn:
You can follow along with the examples in these how-to videos by downloading a free, 30-day trial of MapForce. Check back for new MapForce videos, which are added often.
To meet current mandates, ESEF (European Single Electronic Format) reports must be filed in XBRL. To accelerate the process, regulated companies can take advantage of intelligent software tools to fill the reports with data. One such tool from Altova allows organizations to create valid ESEF XBRL directly in Excel, where finance pros are already comfortable working. This allows them to create reports for filing without having to learn the intricacies of XBRL syntax.
Unlike some other XBRL filing mandates, ESEF requires filing companies to create their own extension taxonomy, which defines the entity-specific data rules for their report. To help customers with this step of the filing process, the Altova ESEF XBRL add-in for Excel includes a visual extension taxonomy designer that makes it a complete start-to-finish ESEF reporting solution.
Let’s see how it works.
Like other regulatory agencies around the world, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has standardized on XBRL for the transmission of data submitted by filing entities. Benefits of using XBRL include increased accuracy and efficiency of supervisory practices and risk identification. The use of XBRL benefits filing organizations as well, because the now-standardized data can be easily validated and then used further for automated report generation and other common requirements.
However, the challenge lies in getting backend data into a valid XBRL format according to the EBA Taxonomy, especially since the employees recording the data are generally financial professionals and not familiar with XBRL syntax.
Let’s take a look at how EBA reporting tools can make it easier.
XBRL International has finalized the sunrise period for its important new OIM (Object Information Model), which includes the xBRL-JSON and xBRL-CSV standards. In turn, it has completed the software certification process. Any product awarded the XBRL Certified Software designation has been thoroughly tested by XBRL International for conformance with the current XBRL specifications.
OIM represents a years-long effort of the XBRL community to modernize the financial reporting standard, providing a model for easily transforming XBRL data between XML and other popular formats like CSV and JSON. This way, organizations can take advantage of the functionality of XBRL and at the same time have XBRL documents written in the format(s) most convenient for them.
Altova XMLSpy and RaptorXML Server were some of the very first tools on the market to support xBRL-JSON and xBRL-CSV and are now officially named XBRL Certified Software for the OIM standards (in addition to being certified for a variety of other core XBRL technologies).
Big Data trends have developers working with XML alongside other data protocols such as JSON and Apache Avro, and XMLSpy supports both of these with dedicated editing views and functionality.
Let’s see how specialized Avro support in XMLSpy makes visualizing and searching Avro files, as well as editing Avro schemas, uniquely easy. We’ll also look at some of the advantages of utilizing RaptorXML Server for high-performance Avro processing.
Nothing’s more frustrating than getting unintended results from an XSLT or XQuery transformation and having to spend hours tracking down the issue – especially if you’ve inherited the project from another developer or haven’t looked at the code in a few months. Of course, XMLSpy has long included an XSLT debugger and XQuery debugger for setting break points and stepping through transformations to identify problems.
For a more interactive debugging process, XMLSpy also includes XSLT/XQuery back-mapping.
With back-mapping enabled, you can simply click on or hover over the portion of your output document you want to zero in on, and XMLSpy will immediately highlight the source XML and XSLT or XQuery instruction that is responsible. Let’s see how it works.
XBRL – the eXtensible Business Reporting Language – is a global framework for exchanging business information. The standard, maintained by XBRL International, is based on XML and designed to offer a standards-based approach to communicating and exchanging financial information between business systems.
The current version of the standard was finalized in 2003 and since then has received widespread uptake and eventual mandates from numerous countries and regulatory agencies, including the United States SEC. Adoption of the standard is due to advantages that include enabling automation and cost savings, better quality of reported data, improved analysis, and better quality of information used for decision making.
Despite its benefits, the complexity of XBRL presents a sharp learning curve for accountants and other stakeholders not familiar with XML, leading to errors and increased consultancy costs. In addition, coinciding with the adoption of big data technologies, XBRL has been used to represent ever growing datasets, which can be resource intensive.
XBRL International has worked over the years to modernize and simplify the standard in response to those challenges, and the Open Information Model (OIM) is an exciting and innovative solution.
Altova Software Version 2022 is now available, with exciting new support for mapping and converting NoSQL databases in MapForce, pure text report output in StyleVision, and Windows 11 across the product line. The release also adds support for the exciting new OIM standard from XBRL International.
Here’s a look at the highlights.
What better goal to set for your summer than learning a new programming language? Forget the “beach books” this summer and set your sights on diving into a new coding language – but which one should you pick?
As reported by EDC there are approximately 24 million professional software developers on Earth, and almost 700 notable programming languages (according to Wikipedia). I would wager a bet there is a staggeringly equal number of places online where you can learn one programming language or another. Whether you are already one of those 11 million coding experts or a newbie to programming, there is a plethora of information out there to sort though.
For the purposes for this blog post, we will certainly look at the world’s most-widely-used programming languages in 2021, but also at important languages for data manipulation and querying, so we’ll discuss: C and its derivatives (C++, C#, and Objective-C), Java, Python, R, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, and XQuery.
Deciding where to start depends entirely on the kind of development scenarios you have in mind, so we’ve broken things down for you to make it easier. It doesn’t matter if you are a seasoned programmer looking to add a new language to your repertoire or a novice who doesn’t know the difference between C, C++, Objective-C, or C# yet. We have assembled a list of explanations to help you choose which language you may want to conquer next.
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.
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.
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.
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.
C++ is one of the most powerful and efficient programming languages available, the de facto choice for high-performance computing, server applications, and complex architectures that demand the most powerful language constructs. The Unified Modeling Language™ (UML®) is the standard to design, visualize, and document models of software systems implemented in C++ and other source code languages.
Altova UModel competes with even the most advanced UML modeling tools with complete code engineering support in UML modeling for C++. UModel includes: C++ code generation from UML diagrams, reverse engineering C++ code to generate UML models, and round-trip engineering to update revisions to either C++ code and UML models.
Model transformation even lets developers convert an existing UML model designed for Java, C#, or Visual Basic to support C++.
Mobile phones bring a world of information to our fingertips, but functionality of even the best-designed mobile apps can be impacted by Web service errors that occur when communicating with external servers. Intermittent cell phone service in remote locations can also degrade app performance when looking up data.
MobileTogether, the low-code, cross-platform mobile app development tool from Altova, includes features that let developers gracefully handle Web service errors in mobile apps to avoid burdening end-users with unexpected app interruptions or cryptic error messages.
In an earlier post we explained HTTP error handling in a MapForce data mapping. Now we’ll look at the same Web service in a mobile app and describe error handling in MobileTogether.
The General Data Protection Regulation, better known as the GDPR, is a set of privacy and data protection rules applying to organizations that process personal data of people residing in either the European Union or European Economic Area. It was built to comply with legislation that went into effect on May 25, 2018 and provides individuals more control of their personal data. The GDPR simplifies the regulatory environment for international business by providing a common set of standards for all businesses working in the EU.
The GDPR requires that data production measures be built into the design of business processes that collect personal data. If a breach occurs, information about this breach must be reported to the supervisory authority. Altova has created the GDPR Compliance Database, a tool that simplifies the storage and access of metadata related to company processes that touch personal data.
The Altova GDPR Compliance Database is a long-term solution for companies looking for a permanent solution to GDPR compliance. It enables companies to respond quickly to any incidents and contains built in mechanisms for change tracking, ensuring compliance measures are well documented.
The video above provides a high-level overview of all the features contained in the Altova GDPR Database.
Learn more about the Altova GDPR Compliance Database and try it free for 30 days.
Altova’s Country by Country (CbC) Reporting Solution makes it easy for multi-national companies to generate valid XML reports to meet the filing requirements mandated by the OECD. Now, in Version 2.0, the CbC Reporting Solution includes new functionality for generating correction reports, as well as the ability to import existing reports for easy analysis.
Let’s take a look at how these new tools make it even easier for customers to meet filing requirements without having to deal with the underlying CbCR XML syntax.
From updated support for standards and relational databases to several new data mapping options, Altova’s Version 2019 Release 3 product line addresses developer requests and ups the ante with innovative new functionality. Let’s take a look at the highlights.
Altova Software Version 2019 introduces over 20 new features to help you sharpen your development game – starting with support for high-res monitors in both XMLSpy and UModel. There are also tools for working with new standards and database versions across the product line, the ability to map and convert data in Google Protocol Buffers format, and much more. Let’s take a look at the highlights.
DiffDog Server makes it easy to automate high-volume comparisons and generate diff reports comparing files, directories, and URLs. This high-performance server software is available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS X machines.
Developers have long relied on DiffDog for comparing XML, text, and binary files, as well as directories and URLs. Now, the power of DiffDog is available in lightning-fast server software for easily automating large comparison tasks.
For instance, DiffDog Server is perfect to automate diff report generation for critical files and directories at a given time – every day, once a week, etc.
Sound effects in mobile apps can reinforce functionality and make an app more fun to use. MobileTogether makes it easy and convenient for mobile developers to add a standard set of sounds to user interface actions across all mobile platforms. For instance, developers might want to add sound effects to signify the success or failure of a file transfer or database transaction. Or simply add a keyclick sound to a button as feedback for a user tap.
MobileTogether includes support to seamlessly localize mobile apps in multiple languages. This empowers developers to build one version of a mobile app that works across many languages as well as across multiple platforms.
Developers can include translations in a single MobileTogether app design for all text phrases required, and when any end-user runs the app, whether on an Android phone, an iPhone, Windows desktop, or any other supported platform, the language for the app is selected to match the language for the device operating system.
With multi-language localization, even text-to-speech functionality is localized to the user’s native language.
Manually comparing versions of a long XML Schema or document to find any differences would be a tedious and error-prone task. XMLSpy has long featured file comparison with highlighted differences in side-by-side windows with merging in either direction. And of course, DiffDog is the go-to comparison utility for text, source code, XML, JSON, and Word documents. Now both XMLSpy and DiffDog support three-way file comparison and difference merging.
Three-way file comparison is especially relevant for files managed in any source control system where two users may have started from the same source file and made different edits that need to be reconciled.
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) standards allow participants with different roles in an industry to communicate clearly and rapidly, and date back to the earliest implementations of electronic communication in the 1950s, long before modern business technologies such as ERP, CRM, and many others. Yet even today, EDI standards continue to evolve to support new requirements and opportunities.
MapForce has long supported data mapping to and from ANSI X12, UN/EDIFACT and other popular EDI standards, and now in the latest release adds support for data mapping NCPDP SCRIPT.
SCRIPT is the state of the art EDI standard developed by the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) for electronically transmitting medical prescriptions, also known as ePrescribing (eRX) in the United States.
When it comes to developing sophisticated software and data integration applications, the more building blocks a developer has at his or her disposal, the better. With each release of our developer and server software, we aim to provide customers with unique tools that give them the edge to get the job done – faster, and more efficiently.
To that end, Version 2018 delivers a unique HTTP testing window, 3-way file comparison functionality, support for SQL Templates, super-powered new server options, and much more.
Software developers working on a new app, data professionals in a variety of enterprises, and even database administrators often encounter unfamiliar databases and need a database tool to quickly explore tables and relationships.
Altova DatabaseSpy is a unique multi-database query, design, and comparison tool with a graphical database design editor that empowers users exploring an unfamiliar database to quickly visualize tables, relationships, and even datatype definitions that may be unique among database types.
We’ve been offering a centralized license server to all customers of our Altova server software products for quite some time. Now, you can also manage all Altova desktop software licenses with the same license server. This support covers all MissionKit products, such as XMLSpy, MapForce, StyleVision, etc., whether they’re licensed separately or as part of a MissionKit product bundle.
Doing so greatly simplifies license management for the IT administrator in your organization and allows you to maximize your usage of the investment you’ve made in Altova software products. The Altova LicenseServer can now handle the management of installed-user, concurrent-user, and named-user licenses for all desktop developer tools and allows you to centralize license management either on a per-department level or for an entire organization.
MapForce Server automates recurring execution of data mappings and transformations designed and tested using Altova MapForce. Every day, MapForce Server is employed in business communication, financial reporting, database ETL, and many other applications to transform critical data between any of XML, JSON, database, EDI, XBRL, flat file, CSV, Excel, and/or Web service formats.
Now, MapForce Server Accelerator Edition offers even faster throughput for high-performance server platforms.
In an earlier post on Creating Elegant Mobile Apps, we showed examples of a simple app and a complete mobile dashboard running on multiple mobile devices. Mobile developers can also delight end users by empowering them to customize the app experience. MobileTogether lets developers tailor cross-platform apps to each mobile platform and empower users through a simple and intuitive custom text size control.
Allowing each end user to set the preferred text size for viewing conditions and the device is both courteous to users and relieves developers of the task of determining the appropriate text size to work across all devices.
MobileTogether apps for enterprises can connect to existing backend databases and generate richly-formatted documents and forms. MobileTogether can also create gateways to existing resources by opening URLs and documents within a mobile app.
The Open URL/File action lets MobileTogether developers give end users the ability to open Web pages or files such as PDFs, image files, text files, etc., that are stored on the client device.
Need to empower mobile users to capture information and generate a document or report from any remote location? MobileTogether lets you build a cross-platform mobile app to do that. You can tailor the app with all the device-specific mobile controls users expect, like check boxes, date pickers, switches and buttons, yet generate output files identical to an existing document, form, or report already familiar throughout the enterprise.
The Actions Dialog in the MobileTogether Designer lets developers define a Print To action to generate PDF, Word, or RTF documents from a mobile app. Once a document is rendered, it is saved on the mobile client for further processing. For instance, a PDF file could be emailed as a file attachment.
As adoption of the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) for financial reporting increases worldwide, new standards are emerging to meet the needs of filing companies and developers alike. Altova’s line of XBRL-enabled products supports a wide-range of XBRL standards and is updated frequently as new specifications emerge.
Let’s take a closer look at two of the newer XBRL standards – Inline XBRL and XBRL Taxonomy Packages – and explore how they work.
Robust and repeatable testing improves any software development project. If you’re creating a mobile app, testing is especially critical given the unpredictable range of end user devices and location variables. Altova MobileTogether includes sophisticated Automated Testing features that let developers:
You can even modify the app to fix a bug and run the test case again to validate the results of changes, which makes this an indispensable QA tool for your mobile app development process.
It’s time for the latest release of Altova’s MissionKit and server software products, and this one delivers a huge boost in functionality for working with big data, databases, XBRL, and much more.
With support for Apache Avro in multiple products, additional databases and drivers across the product line, and two new XBRL specifications in developer and server products, plus a new way to build and process PDF forms, Version 2017 connects all the data dots.
What will be your favorite new feature? Let’s take a look.
Altova MobileTogether combines UI design by visual drag and drop with functional programming using Actions and Action Trees to let developers quickly build mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows devices. MobileTogether 2.2 recently added support for multimedia features that will delight end users with sound effects, video, and audio recording functionality.
MobileTogether 2.1 includes new Try/Throw and Catch error handling actions for mobile apps, allowing developers to build sophisticated error-handling routines that improve end-user experience. For instance, if an app wants to connect to a third-party Web service but the server is not available, error-handling actions permit graceful recovery.
MobileTogether error handling actions for mobile apps work the same way for all platforms, saving developers time since there’s no need to customize error handling based on the requirements of each mobile operating system.
UModel is Altova’s tool for software modeling with support for all 14 UML diagrams, additional UML-style diagrams for databases and XML Schemas, plus Business Process Modeling (BPM), and SysML. UModel 2016 Release 2 adds code engineering support for C# 6.0, complementing support for Java, Visual Basic, and earlier versions of C#. Creating a UML model from existing code can be a great way to analyze and document an unfamiliar project.
I’m excited to reveal some details of today’s Release 2 of Altova MissionKit 2016 desktop developer tools and software products!
v2016r2 introduces over 20 new features and updates to the Altova product line – but that’s a lot to cover in one blog post. Let’s take a look at the top five that are sure to blow your socks off.
MobileTogether empowers developers to populate mobile apps with information retrieved from external sources via REST and SOAP Web services, and consume the data received whether it is XML, JSON, or HTML. MobileTogether support for both REST and SOAP provides mobile app developers with access to vast online data resources for a wide range of applications.
Google recently announced their next generation of managed MySQL offerings on Cloud SQL, so we wanted to take it for a spin and create a cloud-based SQL database that we could then utilize as the back-end for mobile apps, or even for advanced data analytics from our desktop.
According to Google, the two principal goals of the second generation of Cloud SQL were better performance and scalability per dollar. It seems that they succeeded in these goals: the second generation Cloud SQL is more than seven times faster than the first. And it scales to 10TB of data, 15,000 IOPS, and 104GB of RAM per instance — well beyond the first generation. So it looks like the ideal, scalable cloud-based database back-end for mobile apps.
When we demonstrate MobileTogether at tradeshows, we often get asked this question: “So is it just a native app wrapper around HTML5 and JavaScript?” The simple answer is: “No.”
MobileTogether is a complete mobile app development framework that is based on our very own rendering and processing engine, which gives us a lot more flexibility and power to provide a true native app experience on each mobile operating system platform and also make important mobile platform functions that are not commonly accessible from JavaScript or HTML5-based web apps available to the developer.
Altova is a member of XBRL.US and has recently joined the XBRL US Center for Data Quality to support the Data Quality Committee’s initiative to address the public’s concerns about the quality and usability of XBRL financial data filed with the SEC.
As such, we are pleased to announce that we have just released a new set of EDGAR Tools for RaptorXML+XBRL Server on GitHub. These new Python scripts for RaptorXML+XBRL Server now support validation against the new Edgar Filer Manual (EFM) version 35, as well as implementing all the Approved DQC Guidance and Validation Rules from XBRL.US.
Every year ComponentSource issues awards in two categories: Bestselling product award and Bestselling publisher awards. The allocation of these awards is calculated based on real sales orders placed by ComponentSource customers globally during the previous year.
To match the speed of business, mobile app development must be simple, fast, and efficient. Your apps must meet user demands on all platforms and mobilize essential processes seamlessly. Sounds easy enough, right? With MobileTogether, it is.
In true version 2.0 fashion, MobileTogether delivers the final piece of the puzzle: you can build your own, custom-branded app to submit to the app stores.
The new AppStore Deployment process is well suited for customer-facing or specially-branded apps. This option adds to existing support for Instant Deployment of enterprise app solutions using the MobileTogether Mobile Apps. With either approach, you’ll still get your app in end users’ hands in record time – much faster than any other approach.
We’re pleased to announce the launch of the brand new and greatly improved Altova Online Shop.
It’s as convenient and secure as ever to purchase Altova software products, server license renewals, and support and maintenance (SMP) online. The first thing you’ll notice in the new shop is the redesigned, more modern UI that makes it easier to navigate, view your options, and request a quote. When you’re ready to purchase, the completely rebuilt back end will help process your order even more efficiently.
It’s also easier to navigate the upgrade process for products and support as well as annual server licenses, where you’ll have access to more flexible upgrade options.
We’re constantly striving to improve the purchasing experience for our customers and hope you’ll share any feedback or suggestions you have after visiting the Altova Online Shop in the comments below.
