XML Archives

New Tools for Large XML and JSON Documents

May 24, 2023/in Development, JSON, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

Code editors with a graphical option in addition to the traditional text view are great for developers working with XML or JSON. Graphical editors like Grid View in XMLSpy provide a visual representation of the JSON or XML structure, making it easier to understand, navigate, and edit complex data hierarchies.

XMLSpy introduced Grid View years ago and has been improving on it ever since. The most recent update includes the ability to split the editing pane horizontally or vertically, which is especially handy when working with large documents.

Let’s see how it works.

Decorative image of a computer monitor in a dark-lit office setting

Tags: Grid view, new features, XMLSpy

Split Mode in Grid View and More in v2023r2

April 12, 2023/in Data Integration, Development, JSON, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

The latest release of Altova software includes ongoing enhancements for graphical XML and JSON editing in XMLSpy Grid View, new tools for working with XPath/XQuery, support for integrating VDA EDI data in MapForce, and much more.

Here’s a quick overview of all the new functionality being introduced.

Decorative image of a female viewing computer programming on a large screen

Tags: MapForce, new features, video, What's new, XMLSpy

Benefits of an XML Schema Manager

November 9, 2022/in Tools, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

Developers working with XML often need to deal with multiple DTDs and XSDs that define industry-standard vocabularies. Whether it’s DITA for technical writing, HL7 for healthcare data, CbCR for financial reporting or any number of examples, it becomes a challenge to manage the various schemas—and numerous versions thereof—on a day-to-day basis.

Altova recently introduced a new XML Schema Manager integrated in its XML-enabled products. This provides a centralized utility that makes it easy to download and manage industry schemas for use across the product line. Let’s see how it works.

Tags: XML Schema, XSD

Dark Mode and Much More in Version 2023

October 19, 2022/in Applications, Data Integration, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

Long-time XMLSpy and MapForce customers may remember the fun drawings and depictions from Altova’s early ads and logos. Those dark spy images have given way to brighter colors and imagery over the years – but at the same time, developers have gravitated towards dark mode in their applications. Now, dark mode is finally available for XMLSpy and MapForce!

This fun option is being released alongside important support for additional standards and databases, a new tool for managing schemas across the product line, and a brand new product for building ESEF XBRL reports in Excel.

Altova announces Software Version 2023 with dark mode

Tags: new features, What's new

InfoPath Alternatives from Altova

April 27, 2022/in App Development, MobileTogether, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

InfoPath, the popular business forms software from Microsoft, was sunset by the company starting in 2016. Without a direct replacement, customers have turned to InfoPath alternatives to facilitate forms creation and automated data collection.

Altova offers two alternatives that meet different customer implementation requirements. This article will walk you through some background information and help you decide which product to choose.

How to Debug XSLT and XQuery

April 13, 2022/in Development, Software, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

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.

Debug XSLT with back-mapping

Tags: data mapping, XML Editor, XMLSpy, XQuery, XSLT

Transforming and Converting Protobuf

February 10, 2022/in Data Integration, Database, JSON, protocol buffers, XML /by David McGahey

MapForce supports mapping protocol buffers (Protobuf) to and from other structured data formats as mapping sources or targets. In the constant quest for more efficient ways to transfer, manipulate, and manage large structured data sets, Google has created a language- and platform-neutral data format similar to XML, but smaller, faster, and simpler than even JSON data. Tools are available to generate and work with Protobuf using Java, Python, C++, C#, Ruby, and other programming languages.

The structure of any Protobuf message is defined in a .proto file that defines each field name and value type. Altova MapForce lets users drop these .proto files into a data mapping as a source or target along with any other data, including XML, JSON, relational databases, Excel, flat files, REST and SOAP web services, and others. .proto files versions 2 and 3 are supported.

A MapForce data mapping creates compatibility between existing XML, JSON, database or legacy data formats and new applications leveraging the efficiency of Protobuf.