XML Productivity Through Innovation

 I was recently presented with the opportunity to do a review on an XML software editing tool, Stylus Studio 2006 Enterprise Edition, release 3.  My assumption was that I would have a nice IDE, some nice color coding display and perhaps a wizard or two.  Boy was I wrong.  The Stylus Studio program is truly a studio effort.  This is a tool that I can grow to love.

 XML Editing

 Can you edit XML files?  Oh boy can you can edit XML files!   In fact, it can do so in four different tabbed views: color-coded text, a tree with icons, a grid, and a schema view. Any changes made in any view are reflected in all the others. Things like reformatting, indenting, validating schema, and checking for well-formed XML are available by clicking on a toolbar button.  In fact you can choose which of eight different XML parsers you want to validate against.

 Any time you have an XML file open, you also have an area where you can type an XPath query, and get instant results in a sidebar; another toggle switch lets you choose between XPath 1.0 and XPath 2.0 query syntax.  This is great for people like me who are learning the ins and outs of XPath.  This gives me the chance to do a little trial and error experimenting without wasting too much time.

 Probably the best thing going for Stylus Studio is the attention to detail when it comes to using it.  As I explored the menus, every time that I came across something new, there was a video segment that the Studio connected me to.  This was an excellent way to learn about the toolset.  There is a six minute overview video that will introduce you at http://www.stylusstudio.com/xml_videos.html .  There are topics for XML Editing, XSLT, Data Integration, XQuery, XML Schemas and Web Services.

 The wizards are really there to save you time and energy.  One that I really liked was the wizard that would allow me to connect to a SQL data source and retrieve data back in an XML format.  Then I used the Schema wizard to derive an XML Schema from the XML file.  Talk about a time saver!

 There are also wizards that will assist you in converting files such as CSV or tabbed delimited files into XML files.  Other wizards can assist you in generating Java code or obtaining the WSDL from web services. The product comes in three editions:

 

Edition	Cost
Home Edition	$149
Professional Edition	$450
Enterprise Edition	$795

 

You can also download an evaluation copy of the editor at

 http://www.stylusstudio.com/xml_videos.html

 This is an XML editor that I will have in my tool box for a long time to come!

 

  

Stylus Studio 2006 XML Editor
Sonic Software Corporation
Bedford, Massachusetts
(781) 999-7000
www.stylusstudio.com

 Tuc Goodwin, tgoodwin@ntpcug.org, is a long time NTPCUG member and he is an NTPCUG board member. He works for a national consulting company with offices in Las Colinas.  Tuc has worked in Information Technology since 1985 and he is the VB .NET Special Interest Group (SIG). He holds the following Microsoft certifications, which are MCSD, MCAD, MCSE, and MCT.1