XML Archives

Tag Archive for: XML

YAML Editing Tools

May 2, 2024/in Development, JSON, Tools, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

YAML is increasing in popularity due to its combination of human readability, simplicity, and versatility. Often used in configuration files and for data serialization, YAML can be used alongside JSON and XML in modern systems. It makes sense, then, for developers to choose an IDE that supports all three standards.

New YAML tools in XMLSpy add to comprehensive support for XML and JSON development, giving users the flexibility to choose the most suitable serialization format for their specific use cases and preferences.

Let’s take a look at YAML support in the XML and JSON editor.

decorative image: software developer working on code

Tags: JSON, XML, XMLSpy, YAML

Working with Avro Big Data in Your Favorite XML Editor

May 25, 2022/in Development, Software, Tools /by Erin Cavanaugh

Big Data trends have developers working with XML alongside other data protocols such as JSON and Apache Avro, and XMLSpy supports both of these with dedicated editing views and functionality.

Let’s see how specialized Avro support in XMLSpy makes visualizing and searching Avro files, as well as editing Avro schemas, uniquely easy. We’ll also look at some of the advantages of utilizing RaptorXML Server for high-performance Avro processing.

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Tags: Avro, Big Data, JSON, RaptorXML, XML, XML Editor, XMLSpy

Automatically Convert EDI to XML

May 18, 2022/in Data Integration, EDI, Tools /by David McGahey

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has proven to be a durable business-to-business communication technology in use today with history dating to the 1960s and even earlier. Efficient EDI data encoding reduced transaction payload size and improved data transfer speeds at a time when messages were sent over teletype at speeds equivalent to a 300 baud modem. EDI standards bodies promote wide acceptance among enterprises, and systematic evolution of new EDI formats extends support across industries. EDI improves profitability and is a dominant format for e-commerce data exchange.

Despite the advantages, EDI files are barely human readable and need to be translated and mapped for compatibility with other business technologies. Altova MapForce is a graphical EDI mapping tool with native support for all major business data formats in use today, including XML, JSON, databases, flat files, Excel, and Web services, as well as the EDIFACT, X12, HL7, NCPDP SCRIPT, IDoc, PADIS, and SWIFT EDI transaction sets. MapForce can even automatically convert EDI to XML without the need to specify a target XML Schema or perform any manual mapping.

Tags: data conversion, data mapping, EDI, XML

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

Learn About OIM for XBRL

November 17, 2021/in Software, XBRL, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

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.

An Easy Way to Test HTTP Requests During Development

January 20, 2021/in Development, JSON, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

Web and web services developers often need to send HTTP requests – whether for testing APIs, testing REST and SOAP web services, or managing web sites.

XMLSpy makes it easy to send and receive HTTP requests directly in the XML and JSON editor during development with its HTTP Window and WADL/WSDL Import Wizard, a great time-saving tool for debugging web services.

New Tools for XML and JSON Editing

March 13, 2020/in Development, JSON, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

The latest release of XMLSpy adds several user-requested features for working with JSON and XML, as well as new functionality for debugging XPath, updated standards and database support, and more.

Tags: JSON, JSON editor, new features, XML, XML Editor, XMLSpy

How to Create Fillable PDF Forms

February 12, 2020/in Development, Software /by Erin Cavanaugh

Compared to traditional paper forms, fillable PDF forms offer numerous benefits – aside from saving trees – including removing issues with legibility, allowing data validation, reducing re-keying errors, and streamlining information storage and re-use.

I, for one, really wish my kids’ school would switch to PDF forms for the myriad back-to-school information pages that we fill out in triplicate every fall. Perhaps I can give the administrators a demo of StyleVision, which just added support for fillable PDF form creation.

Unlike other PDF form design tools, however, StyleVision also provides form workflow functionality via integration with StyleVision Server for extracting and processing the data that end users enter. Let’s take a look at how it works.

PDF Forms

Embedding Images in XML

January 15, 2020/in Development, JSON, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

One of the really cool features added to XMLSpy a few years ago based on customer requests is the ability to embed external files – such as images – directly in an XML document as encoded text. This gives you the option to package all required data from various external files together in one large XML document. The functionality is also available for embedding images in JSON documents.

Let’s take a look at how easy it is to accomplish this in the XML and JSON editor in just a few steps.

Photo for embedding images

Tags: JSON, JSON editor, XML, XML Editor, XMLSpy

How To Build Your First App

February 13, 2018/in Development, Mobile, mobile development, MobileTogether /by Ty Shuff

MobileTogether Designer provides a powerful drag and drop interface that allows for incredibly quick cross platform app development. To help developers get started I have produced this video tutorial, which covers the interface and the steps needed to build your first app.

By the end of the video developers should be able to navigate the Designer’s interface and create a basic app that takes user input and performs an action with it at the press of a button. This is the first in a series of tutorials aimed at familiarizing developers with the ins and outs of app development in MobileTogether.

Tags: Altova Online Training, mobile, mobile development, MobileTogether, XML

Big Data, Database, and XBRL Tools Get a Huge Boost

October 4, 2016/2 Comments/in Development, Software, XBRL, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

It’s time for the latest release of Altova’s MissionKit and server software products, and this one delivers a huge boost in functionality for working with big data, databases, XBRL, and much more.

With support for Apache Avro in multiple products, additional databases and drivers across the product line, and two new XBRL specifications in developer and server products, plus a new way to build and process PDF forms, Version 2017 connects all the data dots.

What will be your favorite new feature? Let’s take a look.

Big Data Support

XBRL Data Quality of SEC Filings in EDGAR

September 1, 2015/in Software, Technology, XBRL /by Alexander Falk

For fundamental investors probably the most important financial information to study are the financial reports from companies that they wish to potentially invest in. For publicly traded companies in the US, the SEC regulates what data needs to be reported and at which frequency, and investors typically access those financial reports through their own brokerage firm’s website, or through publicly available databases from other Internet providers. In addition, all the original filings from all companies are also directly available from the SEC in the EDGAR database. In addition to HTML and PDF versions of those financial reports, the EDGAR database also contains XBRL versions of those company filings since 2007, with the intent of making this data more easily comparable and directly consumable by computer programs for further analysis.

At least that is the goal…

In this article we’re going to look at some issues with the XBRL data quality of company filings in the SEC’s EDGAR database and show the surprising lack of correlation of high-level financial data extracted from the XBRL filings with publicly available financial data about US companies provided, e.g., by Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, and Fidelity Investments, as well as the shocking discrepancies found in the data reported by those separate services amongst one another.

Edgar_Validation

Tags: Data, data integration, EDGAR, SEC, XBRL, XML

XML Validation Speeds Reach New Levels

June 10, 2015/in Software, XBRL, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

Let’s take a look at a few of the features recently added to the Altova MissionKit desktop developer tools and complete line of server software products, including screaming-fast XML validation speeds using RaptorXML Server inside XMLSpy, frequently requested functionality for EDGAR filing validation, support for SQLite databases and the TRADACOMS EDI format, and much more. You can always learn about the latest and greatest new features on the Altova What’s New page.

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Read more…

Tags: database tool, MapForce, new features, RaptorXML, TRADACOMS, XBRL, XBRL Formula, XML, XML Editor, XML validation, XMLSpy

RaptorXML is here!

June 12, 2013/2 Comments/in XBRL, XML /by Erin Cavanaugh

We are thrilled to announce general availability of RaptorXML®, Altova’s third-generation XML and XBRL processing engine, for download and purchase.
Named for the dinosaur famous for its incredible speed and agility, RaptorXML provides blazing-fast validation and processing of XML, XSLT, XQuery, and XBRL data. Because it’s optimized for parallel computing on multi-core, multi-CPU machines, RaptorXML can scale quickly based on the amount of data you need to process.

Interface Options

In addition to numerous hyper-performance features and strict standards conformance, RaptorXML offers flexible implementation options for developers. These include command line operations, Java and COM APIs, a Python interface, and a built-in HTTP server. The built-in HTTP server allows RaptorXML to be integrated into SOA infrastructures and accept validation jobs, XSLT transformation jobs, etc., submitted via HTTP by other services or client applications.

Workflow Integration

RaptorXML may also be run as a component of Altova FlowForce Server, which provides a user-friendly Web interface for managing workflows based on customizable time or event triggers. This way you can automate validation or XSLT processing jobs based on a variety of triggers, or even pipeline RaptorXML jobs into multi-step processes utilizing MapForce Server and StyleVision Server that start with data aggregation, validation, and conversion and end with multi-channel report generation. The possibilities are many.

Product Options

There are two versions of RaptorXML available:

– RaptorXML Server supports validation and processing of: XML 1.0 & 1.1, XInclude 1.0, Xlink 1.0, XML Schema 1.0 & 1.1, XPath 1.0, 2.0 & 3.0, XSLT 1.0, 2.0 & 3.0 (subset), XQuery 1.0 & 3.0, and more.

– RaptorXML+XBRL Server supports all the features of RaptorXML Server, with the addition of processing and validating the XBRL family of standards: XBRL 2.1, XBRL Dimensions, XBRL Formula 1.0, XBRL Functions, and XBRL Definition Links.

A note to current customers of AltovaXML Reporting Edition: As Altova’s third generation XML processing engine, RaptorXML Server replaces AltovaXML, which is being discontinued. To help existing AltovaXML Reporting Edition customers transition to the new engine and get the full value from their Support and Maintenance Package (SMP), Altova is offering all AltovaXML Reporting Edition customers with current SMP an additional license for RaptorXML Server for the remaining duration of their SMP at no cost. In fact, the value of this new RaptorXML license is significantly higher than the list price of AltovaXML. The RaptorXML Server license is for four cores and can be used in addition to the AltovaXML Reporting Edition license you currently have. To upgrade visit this page.

Free Trial

RaptorXML Server and RaptorXML+XBRL Server are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, and you can download a free trial for your preferred OS.

Tags: RaptorXML, XBRL, XML

Announcing RaptorXML, the Hyper-fast XML and XBRL Server

April 16, 2013/in XBRL, XML, XQuery /by Erin Cavanaugh

We are very excited to be at the XBRL 26 Conference in Dublin, Ireland today to announce a brand new server product in the Altova family of XML and XBRL tools! Altova RaptorXML is a hyper-fast XML and XBRL validation and processing server. It’s Altova’s third-generation XML and XBRL engine, built completely from scratch to help organizations efficiently validate, process, transform, and query the vast and ever-increasing amounts XML and XBRL data being generated as a result of XBRL compliance regulations and myriad other big data trends. RaptorXML is written to be highly scalable for today’s multi-CPU and multi- core computers and servers. This, along with high performance code optimizations and an extremely low memory footprint, has helped make RaptorXML a lightning-fast XML and XBRL server that can meet the demands of today’s data processing applications. Simply put: we architected RaptorXML to combine the performance benefits afforded by modern parallel computing environments with strict compliance to the latest versions of all relevant XML and XBRL standards. RaptorXML includes support for the very latest versions of all relevant standards and has been submitted to rigorous regression and conformance testing. The server will be available in two versions, both of which are available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS platforms. RaptorXML Server supports validation and processing of:

XML 1.0 & 1.1
XInclude 1.0
Xlink 1.0
XML Schema 1.0 & 1.1
XPath 1.0, 2.0 & 3.0
XSLT 1.0, 2.0 & 3.0 (subset)
XQuery 1.0 & 3.0
And more

RaptorXML+XBRL Server supports all the features of RaptorXML Server, with the addition of processing and validating the XBRL family of standards:

XBRL 2.1
XBRL Dimensions
XBRL Formula 1.0
XBRL Functions
XBRL Definition Links

Developers creating solutions using Altova MissionKit XML development and XBRL development tools will be able to power their server applications with RaptorXML for hyper-performance, increased throughput, and efficient memory utilization, giving them the opportunity to validate and process large amounts of XML or XBRL data cost-effectively. Check out the complete list of supported XML and XBRL standards and more details on this groundbreaking new server product. RaptorXML will be available to download and purchase in May.

Tags: RaptorXML, XBRL, XML, XML Schema, XQuery, XSD, XSLT