Freeware XSD Editor
April 30, 2008 | 7:31 pmI wanted to generate some sample XML from an XSD I was given and I was struck by the lack of resources outside of the over bloated Altova tools and their misguided clones much more heavy weight options that seem overkill for what I’m trying to do.
I was actually hoping to find a style sheet that could do the job, but I had no luck.
Along the way though, I did find Liquid XML Studio which in it’s freeware incarnation has some nice schema viewing, editing and generation features. There’s also an integrated web service browser
and although, I haven’t played with it much yet, there’s an XPath expression builder in there too.
My only disappointment is the lack of XSLT support, at least in the freeware version. I’m looking for a reasonable successor to MarrowSoft Xselerator which is no longer supported or being sold by TopXML. Xselerator is not compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, which I has not actually proved a problem for me yet, but it’s days must be numbered.
I’m not adverse to paying for software (Xselerator wasn’t free), but I must admit to being put off a little by hobbled versions. An issue covered much better than I could by Jeff Atwood, here.
My favourite Cyberlink love/hate thing comes to mind; Power DVD Ultra, Power DVD Deluxe, Power DVD Standard or Power DVD OEM. Mmm, now let me see… do any of them work reliably?
Hey Ian, Just curoius by what you mean here by this
Jerry Sheehan | April 30, 2008 | 9:17 pmHey Ian,
Just curoius by what you mean here by this statement, “over bloated Altova tools and their misguided clones”? Perhaps, you can provide more detail as you don’t seem to be backing up this statement in any way besides talking about another product that doesn’t even compare to XMLSpy. I would like to know why you feel this way? Sounds to me as if you’re just put off by the price of the tool and not by the actual results. It’s too bad you feel this way, but XMLSpy is free to try out before you make any purchase. I would just like to know why you feel they have misguided you.
Yes, but have you considered Power DVD Smoky Bacon Edition?
Jeff Atwood | May 1, 2008 | 8:55 amYes, but have you considered Power DVD Smoky Bacon Edition?
@Jerry, you’re absolutely right. I shouldn’t have dropped in an
Ian | May 1, 2008 | 10:38 am@Jerry, you’re absolutely right. I shouldn’t have dropped in an unsupported and largely unrelated statement such as that. With hindsight, it’s way too strong.
First off, it certainly isn’t the price. The issue there is with companies that deliberately remove functionality and choose which features you would pay more for. (Common practice I know, but something that irks.) Sometimes on client sites, it’s useful to have a freeware alternative, if you just want to do some non core thing quickly, rather than wake the sleeping beast of purchasing.
The “misguided clones� bit relates to the tools you do come across are other trying to be the next XML Spy (and why not, they are most successful), rather than say, adding some aspect of XML processing that Spy might not cover.
I may be reacting a little to the mindset you often find the corporate level. You’re doing XML? Oh then you’ll need to have XML Spy… XSLT? Oh, then surely the same people have something for that too. I did this. We were moving into a heavily XML and XSLT messaging space and I convinced management to kit out the team with the full Altova suite.
XML Spy is not light weight. Starting up, it used to near cripple the stock development machines my team was using (this was 3 or 4 years ago and yes, they were under specified). For me XML is light weight; it may not be backed up by a schema or XSD and may only be a fragment. And in our environment this was the norm. XML Spy did not seem friendly to this in such that a lot of the tooling was only appropriate to documents supported by a schema. Remove access this functionality and it’s a pretty big default editor for XML fragments.
But thinking back to the root, it’s not Spy that tainted it for me, it was StyleVision. I just could not get on with this tool at all. It took all the joy out of XSLT and also because it couldn’t map anything that didn’t have an XSD, it proved completely useless to the project at that time.
The Altova products have loads of functionality, likely the richest set. There may have even been some way to get them to work in the project environment we had, but they were not intuitive enough to be adopted by the team and essentially lay (and I believe still lie) dormant. It was never said, but I could feel the egg on my face and I guess I projected that on the tools. You know what they say about the bad workman!
Often though, you just simple light tools to do simple light weight tasks; a text editor that checks you’re well formed and can format, a simple way to invoke a style sheet and see the result.
I’m going to edit my post, because you’re right. I might even take another look at XML Spy.
@Jeff I got the bacon version, but the smoky patch version 30190f wouldn’t install.
Thanks for the comments.