New in
=====================
Version 10.1 adds a new, redesigned XML Schema diagram that allows visual XML Schema editing, a new XML Schema documentation engine supporting multiple output formats, new features in the Author visual XML editing mode, improvements in the Outliner and content completion and updates the database support.
XML Schema Diagram:
* Visual XML Schema Diagram Editor
* In-place editing
* Drag and Drop editing
* Attributes View
* Facets View
* Visual Error Markers
Documentation for XML Schema:
* Multiple Output Formats
* Support for Imported and Included XML Schemas
* Best Look and Performance
Author mode:
* Generate compiled HTML Help from DITA
* Resolve links through XML catalogs
* [API] Execute XPath from an Author extension
* [API] Author extensions can receive document change notifications
Outline:
* XML Schema Outline View
* XSL Outline View
* XQuery Outline view
* Filter components in Outline view
Content completion:
* Content completion offers the list of components from included/imported XML schemas
* Content completion offers the list of components from included/imported XSLT stylesheets
* Content completion offers the list of components from imported XQuery modules
* Content completion offers XQuery functions, including XML databases extensions
XSLT and XQuery:
* Advanced XSLT and XQuery transformation options
* The default validation engine is taken from the associated transformation scenario
Databases:
* Support for PostgreSQL 8.3 database
* Updated TigerLogic database support for version 3.1
* Updated eXist database support for version 1.3
Components and frameworks:
* Updated Saxon SA to version 9.1.0.5
* Updated the TEI framework
* Updated DocBook Stylesheets
Details...
XML Schema Diagram
--------------------------------------
The new XML Schema diagram offers a nice and compact representation of the schemas and allows intuitive schema authoring with drag and drop and in place editing.
* Visual XML Schema Diagram Editor [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_schema_editor.html#diagram_schema_editor]
Starting with version 10.1
* In-place editing [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_schema_editor.html#schema_diagram_in_place_editing]
You can edit XML Schema components features directly in the diagram, for instance the component name, its type, etc. Valid proposals are offered in the contextual menu allowing you to easily insert new components in the current context.
* Drag and Drop editing [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_schema_editor.html#dnd_xml_schema_diagram]
You can design your schema in the new XML Schema diagram by using drag-and-drop to move, copy or make references.
* Attributes View [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_schema_editor.html#visual_schema_diagram_attributes]
The Attributes View provides an easy way to edit attributes for all XML Schema components. You can choose valid values from a list or you can specify your own values. If an attribute has an invalid value it will be highlighted in the table so you can easily spot the error and fix it.
* Facets View [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_schema_editor.html#visual_schema_diagram_facets]
Using the Facets View you can easily check the existing facets of the current simple type (including the default facets), edit values or add patterns and enumerations. If a facet has an invalid value it will be highlighted in the table.
* Visual Error Markers [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_schema_editor.html#visual_schema_diagram_errors]
When an editing action introduces an error the XML Schema validator signals it by painting in the diagram the border of the component containing the error with red.
Documentation for XML Schema
------------------------------------------------
* Multiple Output Formats [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_schema_documentation.html#multiple_output_formats]
It is possible to generate XML Schema documentation in various formats including HTML, PDF and Docbook. For large XML Schemas a "generate chunks" option is available for the HTML format that will output documentation in multiple files. The documentation includes diagrams representing the models for the XML elements, attributes, types, etc.
* Support for Imported and Included XML Schemas [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_schema_documentation.html#support_import_include]
The generated documentation includes all the components defined in the imported or included schemas.
* Best Look and Performance [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_schema_documentation.html#schema_documentation_best_performance]
The documentation output is carefully designed with a balanced selection of colors and a neat layout.
Author mode
-------------------------------
* Generate compiled HTML Help from DITA
* Resolve links through XML catalogs
The references presented as links in Author mode such as the DocBook elements link and xref or the XHTML a element are resolved now through the XML catalogs registered in the
* [API] Execute XPath from an Author extension
The API for developing custom Author actions was enhanced with two functions for executing XPath expressions on the edited document.
* [API] Author extensions can receive document change notifications
The API for developing Author extensions provides support to receive notifications when the XML document is changed.
Outline
---------------------------
* XML Schema Outline View [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_schema_editor.html#xml_schema_outline_view]
The Outline view for XML Schema presents the XML schema components from the current schema and from the included and imported schemas. All the global components can be sorted by name and grouped by type, location and namespace.
* XSL Outline View [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xslt_editor.html#xslt_outline_view]
The Outline view for XSLT presents the stylesheet components (templates, functions, variables, parameters, attribute-sets, character-maps) from the currently edited file and from the included and imported stylesheets. Components can be sorted by name and grouped by type, location and mode.
* XQuery Outline view [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xquery_editor.html#xquery_outline_view]
The outliner presents the list of all components (namespace declarations, variables and functions) from the imported modules together with the components declared in the current file. Components can be sorted by name and grouped by type, location and namespace.
* Filter components in Outline view
You can easily focus on a subset of components using the new Outline view filtering feature. Just type a text fragment in the filter box and only the components matching that will be presented. For advanced usage you can use wildcards (*, ?) and separate multiple patterns with commas.
Content completion
--------------------------------------
* Content completion offers the list of components from included/imported XML schemas [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_schema_editor.html#xsd_cc_import_include]
XML Schema editing is made easier as you can insert references to components from other XML Schema files assisted by the content completion.
* Content completion offers the list of components from included/imported XSLT stylesheets [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xslt_editor.html#xsl_cc_import_include]
The content completion offers XSLT variables, templates, functions and modes not only from the current stylesheet but also from the included or imported ones.
* Content completion offers the list of components from imported XQuery modules [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xquery_editor.html#xquery_cc_import]
The content completion offers variables and functions not only from the edited file but also from the imported XQuery modules.
* Content completion offers XQuery functions, including XML databases extensions [http://www.oxygenxml.com/xquery_editor.html#xquery_cc_database]
For all the supported XML database engines (eXist, MarkLogic, Tiger Logic, Oracle, SQL Server, XHive, Tamino, etc..), the content completion displays both the XQuery standard functions and the extension functions available for that engine.
XSLT and XQuery
-----------------------------------
* Advanced XSLT and XQuery transformation options
The advanced options of Saxon SA and Saxon B are available now at the transformation scenario level. Options like validation of the source XML file, handling of recoverable errors, whitespace stripping and the initial XSLT mode or template can be customized for each scenario.
* The default validation engine is taken from the associated transformation scenario
If a transformation scenario is associated with the edited XSLT file, XQuery file or SQL file the default validation processor is the processor set in the transformation scenario. For example if you run an XQuery against an eXist database that XQuery will be validated by
Databases
-----------------------------
* Support for PostgreSQL 8.3 database
The PostgreSQL 8.3 database is supported in the Database perspective of
* Updated TigerLogic database support for version 3.1
Version 3.1 of the TigerLogic XML database is now supported in
* Updated eXist database support for version 1.3
Along with the support for the 1.2 version of eXist XML database,
Components and frameworks
---------------------------------------------
* Updated Saxon SA to version 9.1.0.5
The Saxon SA XSLT and XQuery processor was updated to the latest version 9.1.0.5.
* Updated the TEI framework
The TEI framework was updated to version 1.3.0. The TEI XSL stylesheets were updated to version 5.15.
* Updated DocBook Stylesheets
The DocBook stylesheets were updated to version 1.74.3. The syntax highlighting of source code included in DocBook documents is enabled by default for the built in transformations to PDF and HTML.
Monday 2 March 2009
oXygen XML Editor version 10.1
Friday 18 July 2008
Performance of various data merging methods
Recently I got the task to develop a Web Part which would aggregate the contents of a couple of RSS Feeds, sort them descending on the publishing date and display the top n of them. Thinking about how the whole thing could be done, I have found out that there are multiple methods to get things done. The Web Part was supposed to work on an Internet site so I decided to have a closer look at the performance of the various methods.
The first thing you notice is that the XSLT based approach is definitely much faster than other methods using DataTables. So if you have to provide a good performing data merging solution, you might want to check whether you are able to benefit of XSLT.
Tuesday 15 July 2008
Impressive XSL-FO resource
I was looking for how to make appear the name of current chapter in a PDF header. This is called "running header".
Found Dave Pawson's site on XSLT, DocBook, and Braille. The FO section contains very serious stuff pretty above all other tutorials!
The running header requires no trick. It's a standard FO feature: define a marker corresponding to current chapter title / whatever (fo:marker) and retrieve it from the header definition (fo:retrieve-*).
Monday 30 June 2008
Performing XSL Transformations with JavaScript
by Maxim Porges @ 11:38 PM
At Highwinds, we document release notes for our software releases on our wiki. While this is a necessary and sensible practice, I do find it a little tedious since it requires copying some of the information from Bugzilla to our wiki.
Since I am lazy, and Bugzilla allows export of search results to XML, I made an XSL style sheet to convert the results of a bug search for a particular release to wiki text that TWiki would understand. This was all well and good, but required me to go through a number of manual steps...
Software Review: XMLSpy 2008 From Altova
Written by T. Michael Testi
Published June 12, 2008
See also:
» Product Review: ColorMunki From X-Rite
» Software Review: NetAdvantage For .NET Suite- NetAdvantage For Windows Forms 2008 Volume 1 From Infragistics
» The Writing Was on the Wall But GM Couldn't Read It
XMLSpy 2008 is the latest version of Altova's integrated development environment (IDE) for XML. XMLSpy allows programmers to create XML-based applications and Web services in a more dynamic and easier to understand environment. The version that I am reviewing is XMLSpy 2008 release 2 which came out on May 7, 2008 and it is based on the Enterprise version. There is also a Professional version and if you would like to view the differences between the two, you can check out the feature comparison list.
XSLT, Second Edition
By Doug Tidwell
Second Edition June 2008
Pages: 986
ISBN 10: 0-596-52721-7 | ISBN 13: 9780596527211
Book description
After months of anticipation and delay, the W3C finally released the XSLT 2.0 standard in January 2007. The updated edition of this book offers practical, real-world examples that demonstrate how you can apply XSLT stylesheets to XML data using either the new specification, or the older XSLT 1.0 standard. Want to find out how the 2.0 specification improves on the old? This book will explain.
Friday 27 June 2008
Integrated Support for XML Data Management
XML is increasingly being used as the language of data exchange. An XML document based on a DTD or a XML Schema contains data that conforms to a standard structure. A number of technologies, such as ebXML (Electronic Business XML), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration), and RDF (Resource Description Framework) are based on XML. New business concepts, such as B2C and B2B, e-services, commerce resource platform, peer-to-peer commerce and collaborative commerce, have emerged as a result of XML. In this article, XML data management in Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.5 is highlighted.
Database’s Role in XML Data Management
Most XML processing without a database is done in the application layer. XML processing in the application layer has its disadvantages. Parsing XML in the application layer doesn’t include storing and querying the parsed XML document. Querying XML data with XPath and XQuery with a query engine isn’t supported. Transforming data with a XSLT processor and storing data in a file system is less optimal than database-based transformation and storage.
DocBook XSL - ePub target is ready for wider testing
If you're using the DocBook XSL distribution you've probably already seen that DocBook XSL 1.74.0 has been released with ePub support. Note that the 1.74.0 release is an experimental release, and is made available for testing and evaluation. See the release notes for a note about DocBook dot-0 releases.
Utilizing XML and XSLT in ColdFusion MX
Macromedia ColdFusion MX brings a whole new set of features and advantages to web development—silky-smooth Flash integration, way-cool support for web services and other groovy stuff that will surely make the lives of ColdFusion developers easier and more interesting. One of the neatest new features in ColdFusion MX, and one which forms the basis for many of its other new features, is its native support for XML.
XSL Tooling Updates
XSL Tooling 0.5M8
With the release Wednesday of Ganymede, the XSL Tooling project will also be having a milestone for 0.5M8. This is primarly a bug fix milestone, and XPath content assistance is a bit more intelligent. There may be a few issues still left to be worked out, but over all support for content assistance should be better. As stated earlier there is a new set of icons for the XSL Editor, and Launching/Debugging configurations. 0.5M8 is the last planned milestone. We'll work on getting a couple of release candidate ready next, and hopefully have an official 0.5 version by the end of July.
Using Annotations to Transform LINQ to XML Trees in an XSLT Style (Improved Approach)
You can use LINQ to XML to transform XML trees with the same level of power and expressability as with XSLT, and in many cases more than with XSLT.
One of the reasons that XSL is so powerful is that you can write multiple rules to transform a node. The first rule that matches is the one that is applied.
Rapid XSLT 0.1
The project is still too early in its development life cycle to be compared to other, more mature, editors and IDEs. Nevertheless, it does provide a complete set of tools that a programmer can use for writing XSLT.
There are no plans to further develop this project.
Some of the features of this editor:
- Ctrl+Shift brings up a list of frequently typed XSLT elements with a shortcut letter that allows one to be inserted.
- Shorthand Notation supports two groups of elements that abstract nicely to programmatic constructs: xsl:call-template and xsl:with-param elements and xsl:choose, xsl:when and xsl:otherwise. They can be written using the shorthand notation as a method call and a case-default construct, respectively.
- Ctrl+Alt+arrow keys navigate between elements and attributes.
- User preferences allow inserted code to be customized.
- One or more elements can be wrapped with an inserted element.
- Multiple XSLT files can be opened and edited at once.
The download file contains help sheets to explain how to use the program.
What are its known limitations?
- The preferences window is not user friendly in that the options that should be set via radio buttons are set by typing YES or NO into text fields.
- When closing an open document, the user is prompted to save even if no changes have been made to it.
- Only one construct can be typed at a time in the shorthand notation text area. Therefore, a case/default construct may not be followed by a method call, and vice versa.
Opera 9.5 review
At 6.8 MB, Opera 9.5's install file is about twice as fat as the approximately 3 MB we're used to from Opera - it is even larger than the 5.7 MB install of Mozilla Firefox 2.0 (but not larger than Firefox 3.0 at 7.8 MB).
Opera attributes some of Opera 9.5's improved speed to better support for current web standards such as (X)HTML, XML, XSLT, CSS 2.1, SVG 1.1 and JavaScript.
Testing XSL and Xpath with Java Swing
This week I finished a first version of a little java application that I created to build and test xpath expressions and xslt stylesheets.
I was very charmed with the little tool XTrans( http://www.simxtech.com/users/zc2/xtrans/). This smart tool is extreemly small (only a few KB) and enables you to edit xslt's, load xml files and transform them with the created xslt. Unfortunately for me is that it is a windows application, based on the MSXML parser. And I've not found a counterpart on Linux yet. Oh, of course you could do a lot of that with jDeveloper or XMLSpy. Maybe even better. But XTrans is so small and if you're working with xslt's, sometimes the only thing you need is a good ascii-editor and an xmlparser. And a little driver application that helps you with driving your xml and xslt trough the xmlparser.
XSL 2.0 Requirements and survey
The W3C XSL FO subgroup is working towards XSL-FO 2.0. The first public working draft of the XSL-FO 2.0 Requirements document was published at http://www.w3.org/TR/xslfo20-req/ back in March. The best way for the Requirements document, and an eventual XSL-FO 2.0, to reflect peoples’ needs is for people to read the document and provide feedback.
Monday 12 May 2008
Some differences between XQuery 1.0 and XSLT 2.0
Following are some differences between XQuery 1.0 and XSLT 2.0.
1. In XQuery 1.0, functions should be declared before use. While in XSLT 2.0, functions may be defined anywhere in the stylesheet (provided, the function body is a child of xsl:stylesheet).
2. In XQuery 1.0, the XML Schema namespace, http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema is not required to be declared for using the prefix, xs:. While in XSLT 2.0, XML Schema namespace should be declared if any reference to the prefix xs: exists in the XSLT stylesheet....
Using AIR for XSLT Processing
One of the features we're investigating for the next version of the media player requires that we be able to do client-side XSL transformations. I had heard a few rumors that AIR exposes the XSLT processor that's built into WebKit (which is AIR's embedded HTML engine), so I shot off a couple of emails to the AIR team. Sure enough, this functionality is exposed through AIR's Javascript API.
Wednesday 26 March 2008
Definitive XSL-FO
The definitive guide to state-of-the-art XML publishing with XSL-FO!
XSL-FO (XSL-Formatting Objects) enables enterprise applications to publish graphic-arts quality printed and electronic documents from any XML data store, no matter how large or complex. In Definitive XSL-FO, one of the world¡¯s leading XML experts shows how XSL-FO is revolutionizing document publishing. The book offers concise, authoritative . . .
Volantis releases open-source mobile Internet toolkit
Mobile Web developers can make use of a new open source toolkit, released this week by Volantis Systems.
The Volantis Mobility Server (formerly called Framework) can now be downloaded under the GNU General Public License version 3. The Java-based software is a framework for building Web applications for mobile devices. The applications automatically is recast on the fly to adapt specifically to whatever device is accessing the Web content.
The approach tackles the same type of problem as a technique called transcoding, but does more expansively. Transcoding takes one markup language and converts it to another, says Watson. Some approaches made use of the Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) standard to convert XML documents from one format to another. "XSLT is not a programming language," says Watson. "To do the kind of one-to-many conversions as we do, requires very complex coding, and XSLT is just not up to that."
Thursday 20 March 2008
XPontus XML Editor 1.0.0.1
The version 1.0.0.1 of XPontus XML Editor(XPontus - Homepage) is out. XPontus XML Editor is a simple XML Editor oriented towards text editing. It aims to become the free alternative to commercial XML IDEs such as XML SPy or Oxygen XML Editor. The software has been entirely rewritten to support plugins, so most of XPontus features are provided as plugins which can be extended.
XPontus - Homepage
