XML Tribune

Running any XSL transformation as easy as getting the file properties in the Windows File Explorer? A user friendly way to run XSL transformations allows a wider range of people to work with XML files. Therefore the next version of XML ValidatorBuddy will provide a command to do XSL transformations. So XML ValidatorBuddy makes it possible for everyone to run XSL transformations for any XML file using any XSL stylesheet by a simple dialog:

XSL transformation dialog

All you need to do is to install XML ValidatorBuddy (available with version 2.7) and the free AltovaXML parser.

A tutorial is a wonderful thing. Learning how to write Schematron rules with a tutorial is also a wonderful thing. Unfortunately validating XML instance files against a Schematron schema is not always easy. But if it is cumbersome to work with Schematron schemas, then going through the tutorial is also no fun. XML ValidatorBuddy makes it easy to validate XML instance files against a Schematron rule set directly within XMLSpy. This enables you to focus on Schematron itself and not on how to use it.

I take the files from chapter 7 of the Schematron tutorial available at http://www.dpawson.co.uk/schematron/keys.html . Of course the method described here to create and validate the sample files can also applied on any other chapter of the tutorial.

The basic steps are:

1. Select and copy the content of the Schematron schema and XML sample instance files directly from the web pages of the tutorial (with Ctrl+C).
2. Create a new .sch document for the Schematron schema and a new .xml document for the sample XML in XMLSpy. Paste the file content with Ctrl+V.
3. Save the files anywhere you like.
4. Add a folder to the Project open in XMLSpy and put both into the new folder. ValidatorBuddy recognizes that there is a .sch file in the same project folder as the XML instance and takes this schema for Schematron validation.
5. Make the .xml file the active document in XMLSpy.
6. Press “Validate” on the Schematron tab of the XML ValidatorBuddy plugin window.
7. Check the results

Schematron tutorial chapter 7 result

I have 5 Google Wave invitations to give away. So how do you get one?

Just download XML ValidatorBuddy and test the tool. Give valuable feedback and I will send an invitation for you if you want a Google Wave account. There are no formal requirements for the feedback. It is enough that you suggest or find anything which is not obvious and a real improvement.

Please note that of course I can’t guarantee that you get an account and I even can’t promise that I will write back to everybody. But if you are one of the first 5 testers I will send the invitation.

[Update 12/16/2009] There are still some Google Wave invitations left…

Here is a summary of the changes in XML ValidatorBuddy 2.6:

Copy validation report in XMLSpy as XML

In the past it was not possible to access the validation report in the XMLSpy plugin for further processing beside scrolling through the error list and selecting the error location. Now the Schematron and Xerces tab are providing a button to copy the validation results as a new XML document in XMLSpy. The XML has the same structure as the log file generated by a batch validation.

Validate instance files with selected Schema

Validation from the Windows File Explorer supports a new command to validate one or multiple XML instance files against a selected schema file. This command overwrites any present xsi:SchemaLocation or xsi:NoNamespaceSchemaLocation. If no schema location attribute is in the XML root element the schema is loaded as NoNamespaceSchemaLocation. This functionality uses the Xerces SAX validator and is therefore also handy on validating huge files without any schema already assigned.

Creation of batch log in UTF-8

The batch log file is now written in UTF-8 encoding. The UTF-16 format without a BOM which was used in the past caused some problems on reading. Several people requested to change this to UTF-8. Of course this is the better choice anyways.

Some weeks ago Altova released the new versions of their products. XMLSpy 2010 comes now with a brand new scripting tool to provide custom forms, macros and support for any kind of automation possible with the built-in API of XMLSpy:

New scripting tool in XMLSpy 2010

XMLSpy already comes with some sample scripts to show how to implement macros and forms. If you try it yourself and you start to write some code in the Script tool you will notice that there are also entry helpers available for the XMLSpy API. Very useful.

There are two macros available which I recommend to add them as commands to your XMLSpy menu. SearchPath and CloseAllButActiveDoc. SearchPath opens a dialog where you get a list of all files currently in the project together with all other files open in XMLSpy. You can then type a search string and the list is reduced to the ones which match (case in-sensitive, substring search). CloseAllButActiveDoc does what it says. With one click all documents but not the active one are closed.

Just use the Customize dialog from the Tools menu to add the macros as commands:

Customize dialog in XMLSpy

Use the “Display text” field to give the command a friendly name. Do the same for the SearchPath macro and then go to the Keyboard tab to assign a keyboard accelerator for easy access. After I did that my Tools menu in XMLSpy looks like this:

Modified Tools menu

Don’t be confused about the “Umschalt+Alt+S”. Umschalt just means Shift on a German system.

I can just recommend to check-out the new scripting tool in XMLSpy. With the help of a few macros this excellent XML editor can be even better…

Just a quick note. Yes, XML ValidatorBuddy is compatible with Windows 7. The tool integrates into the Windows File Explorer successfully also there.

However, as a side note. The tool is currently not available as 64 bit build. So it won’t be loaded into Windows File Explorer on a 64 bit system and the TortoiseXML menu is not available. But the tool can still be used inside of XMLSpy (which is also a 32 bit application) and as command line tool.

Recently I decided to add the TrialPay offer to the payment options for XML ValidatorBuddy. I already learned about TrialPay months ago but never took the time to set up a product or just even to create an account. Of course it doesn’t take just “5 minutes” as TrialPays says but after one hour I successfully added ValidatorBuddy as a new product. Now I have to wait until it gets approved and then I can add a link to the TrialPay page as an additional payment option to my web pages.

We will see if the typical ValidatorBuddy user, and close-but-not-really customer, also likes one of the TrialPay offers…

I just stumbled over this very good blog: http://blog.asmartbear.com/

Definitely worth reading if you run a microISV.

You might have read this already in the Altova newsletter or via some press release. Altova released new versions of all products a couple of days ago with a lot of additional benefits for the users. Of course you can go directly to Altova and read all about it but there are also some articles on XML Aficionado which explain the major new features in a more personal way. A good starting point to digg deeper because every article also has a lot of links pointing directly to the pages for a more detailed description of the current topic.

The row of articles on XML Aficionado about the latest release of Altova are:

• A general overview about the whole release
• Amazing database merge and differencing in DiffDog 2009 and DatabaseSpy 2009
• Intelligent XPath auto-completion. Extremly useful especially on editing XSL! I know no better implementation of XPath auto-completion in any other software.
• Expanded support for repositories (source code control)
• Identity constraints made easy in XMLSpy