Software developers and other data professionals often need to examine new data instances before designing processes for efficient production. As JSON becomes a more popular format for data exchange, the tradeoff for smaller data payloads can be loss of clarity of the underlying data structure.
XMLSpy has supported viewing, modeling, and editing JSON files since 2010 and includes rich tools to analyze JSON data, including applying filters, formulas, and charts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The advantages of JSON as a lightweight, interoperable data format have secured its place as a favored mechanism for serializing and transporting data on the web. However, most applications still benefit from or require validation of client-submitted data. Enter the JSON Schema spec, which lets you describe the structure of JSON data for a particular application, for both documentation and validation purposes.
Though JSON Schema code is by design human-readable, building a complex schema with nested and repeating sections in a text-only editor becomes time consuming and error-prone quickly. Let’s look at five ways a graphical editor is a must-have for JSON Schema development.
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.
XMLSpy is known for its graphical editing views, which make working with and editing XML and JSON more straightforward – and therefore increase developer productivity.
Both XML Grid and JSON Grid have received major updates in recent releases, and we’re committed to making these graphical views as feature-rich and effective as possible through continuous improvement. As such, we rely on and appreciate feature requests and developer feedback. The latest release of XMLSpy provides some great updates in response to this input.
