XML Archives

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

MapForce Data Mapping Tutorial (Video)

April 4, 2022/in Data Integration, Database, EDI, JSON, SQL, XML /by Ty Shuff

Altova MapForce is an any-to-any data transformation, conversion, and ETL tool for integrating data.

A graphical data mapping tool, MapForce has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that lets you easily convert data between any two formats, such as XML, JSON, relational databases, NoSQL databases, EDI, and more. It also features an extensive library of conversion functions that can be chained together to form custom functions that can be reused throughout your projects.

Data translated by MapForce can be pulled to or pushed from a relational or NoSQL database and all data management products, and it can be adapted to customize in-house data management solutions.

The MapForce tutorial video below covers all major features offered by the data integration tool and shows example mappings between several different types of files.

You can try MapForce yourself with a free, 30-day trial.

Tags: data integration, data mapping, Database Mapping, JSON mapping, MapForce, MapForce Server, XML JSON

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.

How to Compare XML and Other Files

January 26, 2022/in Development, Tools, XML /by Ty Shuff

The ability to diff and merge files is a necessity for every developer. This can be especially troublesome when trying to compare differences between files containing structured data, such as XML.

The video tutorial below provides an explanation on how to compare XML files – and more – using both XMLSpy and DiffDog. These powerful utilities perform diff and merge operations in an XML-aware manner, which reduces the number of false positives seen when comparing files.

Compare XML files with XMLSpy

Tags: diff merge tool, DiffDog, XML, XMLSpy