Streamlining localization

There is an interesting article on streamlining localization processes in XML-based single-source publishing on the Altova Blog - has very good insight into translation memory systems vs. XML-based documentation.

TechEd, Open XML, and HDR Photography

While being at TechEd in Orlando, FL, last week, I had lunch with Doug Mahugh and we talked about the upcoming ODF support in Office 2007 SP2, the new features in the Open XML SDK, Altova's new support for Open XML diff/merge in DiffDog, creation of Open XML from StyleVision, and data integration and mapping for Open XML in MapForce, as well as various other XML-related topics.

We also talked about some other industry topics and finally came to chat about HDR (high dynamic range) photography. Doug sent me a few links to some of his recent photos, and this one impressed me the most.

I couldn't help it and had to get the software the same day. However, as I had left my Canon SLR camera at home for this trip, I wasn't able to test-drive HDR imaging until I got back home today:

Obviously, this isn't a particularly exciting scene - I just shot from our balcony towards the end of the cul-de-sac. I used an automatic exposure bracketing of ±2 and loaded all three images into Photomatix and then played with some settings in the tone-mapping to create some vibrant and surreal colors.

But I still like the result quite a bit - it makes me want to go out and take some HDR photos of Marblehead harbor and experiment with other local scenes where the high dynamic range can come into play nicely.

Creating Open XML (OOXML) Spreadsheet Documents

As Office Open XML (OOXML) gains more wide-spread adoption and popularity - and since it is now an ISO standard - developers will be interested in how easy it is to create Open XML documents directly in their applications, e.g. spreadsheet documents that are compatible with Excel 2007. Most approaches require quite a bit of hand-coding and worrying about the actual OpenXML specifications, but what I want to show you today on the XML Aficionado blog is a way to use MapForce to auto-generate all the source-code (for example in C#) that will produce the desired .xlsx document so that you can integrate it into your applications (and use it royalty-free within your organization).

I will use a very simple example to demonstrate how you can turn some raw sales data in an arbitrary XML format:

into a pretty business graph in Excel 2007:

For such a simple use-case you could, of course, simply open the XML file in Excel 2007 directly, but I am only using a simple example to illustrate the process. The true power of this approach is that you can easily work with very complex data in a visual and intuitive manner - and that you can auto-generate the source-code to implement this as part of your application to automate such processes.

So let's open MapForce and insert the XML data file into our working surface where we are going to define the mapping:

Next we are going to insert an OpenXML spreadsheet document into the work surface of our mapping project - we can either insert an empty spreadsheet, or we can use an example document that we have previously created in Excel to indicate what sheets and what data ranges or labels should be receiving our data:

Now it is time to define how the source XML data should be mapped to the target OpenXML document. This particular mapping is just one example - MapForce lets you map between any combination of XML, relational database, EDI, flat-file (e.g. legacy text files), and OpenXML spreadsheet documents. In our case we are going to convert from start-date/end-date ranges in the XML source to months in the OpenXML document and from states to regions:

Once you've defined the whole mapping, this is how your project will look in MapForce - note that underneath the blue-gradient working surface the "Mapping" tab is the one that is presently selected, because I've just defined my mapping between the input and output files:

To test my mapping - before I auto-generate my program code, I can click on the "Output" tab underneath the working surface, and MapForce opens up Excel 2007 embedded within the same application frame to show me the result that is produced by my mapping:

This Excel table is then used to produce the graph that I showed earlier.

Now I want to auto-generate code in C# for my data integration project that will automate this generation of Excel 2007 OpenXML documents, so the next step is to check the code-gen settings to ensure that I generate it for the correct development environment - in my case Visual Studio .NET 2008 - but MapForce supports many other environments and can also generate code in C++ or Java in addition to C#.

OK, now we are ready to generate code. All that is required is using the corresponding command on the File menu, and all the source-code files are placed in a designated output directory, and the corresponding solution file for Visual Studio is generated as well:

The auto-generated source-code can now be integrated into any application and can be used royalty-free within your organization to automate the creation of Open XML (OOXML) spreadsheet documents.

If you would like to experiment a bit more with this example yourself, you can find all the files used here in the MapForceExamples directory when you download the free 30-day evaluation version of MapForce.

Also, keep in mind that you can use Excel 2007 files (or any other OpenXML spreadsheet documents) in MapForce both as input and output files, so you can create data integration applications and mapping or conversion code for any possible scenario that involves OOXML spreadsheet data, XML, EDI, or relational databases.

Creating Open XML documents from XML and database data

The latest release 2008r2 of StyleVision gives users important new functionality for creating advanced stylesheets to publish XML and database data in Word 2007, which uses the new Open XML (OOXML) data format, as well as simpler processes for publishing the same source content in other formats. And, to further ease the transition for developers and designers working with OOXML, we have just reduced the price of StyleVision considerably. As adoption of Open XML increases, StyleVision developers will be ready with a powerful tool for publishing XML and database data in what is sure to be the most predominant end-user document format, now that Open XML has been approved as an ISO standard.

Here is how the process works:

1. Open your existing XML document or connect to an existing relational database to populate the source pane in StyleVision:
   
   
2. Drag & drop elements from the source pane into the design pane and apply styles to them, thereby creating a meta stylesheet for producing the desired output formatting:
   
   
3. Click on one of the preview tabs underneath the design pane to preview the output in any of the supported output formats (Open XML for Word 2007, HTML, PDF, and RTF) - all outputs are automatically created from one and the same visual design:
   
   
4. Save the generated output file(s) as well as the specific stylesheets that have been auto-generated to render your data in the desired output formats again and again...
   

StyleVision can access data from database tables,views, or you can directly enter a SQL SELECT statement to query only for particular data from a database. This makes StyleVision ideal for flexible database reporting, too.

If you are interested in further details, you can read more about the new features of StyleVision 2008r2 here.

New BIG "minor" release of Altova tools

It's called Version 2008 Release 2, but in reality it should be a new major version. Our "problem" is that each year has 12 months whereas our talented engineers are practically cranking out a new major version every 5-6 months. So we have to call one of them the major release and the other one a minor release - but this one is BIG!

We've updated all the tools in the popular Altova MissionKit bundle with tons of new features and usability enhancements that our customers have asked for. I am most excited about the following, which provide big benefits to our users:

• Very Large File Support: XMLSpy 2008r2 contains a number of advanced optimizations for working with very large files. These result in a reduction of memory consumption by up to 75-80% compared to the previous version when opening and validating XML documents in Text View. This means that you can now open and work with files that are about 4-5 times larger than those supported in the past!!
• Extended Open XML (OOXML) Support: XMLSpy was the first XML Editor to directly support Open XML in April 2007 and today we are introducing more Open XML support in these products:
• MapForce 2008r2 now directly supports SpreadsheetML and allows the user to place any Excel 2007 document inside a mapping project to directly transform data from EDI, XML, databases, web services, and legacy text files to Excel 2007 and vice-versa. This new support for Open XML and Excel 2007 is, of course, also available in the automatic code-generation capabilities of MapForce, allowing developers to generate application code for recurring data transformation scenarios in Java, C# and C++.
• StyleVision 2008r2 now directly supports Open XML output in Word 2007 (WordprocessingML) to allow the user to generate multiple rich output formats from one single stylesheet design. StyleVision supports the generation of stylesheets via an easy-to-use drag&drop interface from XML documents as well as from databases and is the ultimate report designer that can produce output in HTML, PDF, RTF, and Open XML from one visual design. In addition, it allows developers the creation of Authentic forms from the same design to facilitate XML-based data entry across an organization with no deployment cost.
• DiffDog 2008r2 now supports detailed XML differencing between Open XML documents, including the ability to directly edit and merge changes across those files. In addition, the directory comparison feature now also supports ZIP file types so that directories and ZIP archives can be compared as well.
• Expanded Modeling Capabilities: UModel 2008r2 now supports the OMG's BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) and is also the first UML tool to ship full support for C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0 - including accurate parsing of new language constructs in these programming languages that directly support XML. UModel does, of course, also continue to fully support Java 6.0 and provides full reverse-engineering and round-tripping for all the above languages.
• Better Integration Through Global Resources: developers using multiple Altova tools - for example as parts of the MissionKit bundle - can now take advantage of increased integration between these tools. The new Global Resources feature lets a developer define directories, databases, and ancillary files in one central location and those are shared between all applications. In addition, a developer can define multiple deployment scenarios (e.g. test, staging, production) for their XML projects, and also directly connect the output of one application to become the input for another.

The above list has just a few of the highlights that I find most exciting. More details and all the other cool new features can be found on the "What's New" page on the Altova website. There is also a press release being issued today about the new version.

I will also be covering some of these features in more detail on this XML Aficionado blog in the next couple of days - stay tuned...

Open XML is now an ISO Standard

The official press-release came out of the ISO offices on April 2nd and Open XML (OOXML) is now an ISO Standard with the official designation IS 29500.

Microsoft issued a press release today, and states that 86% of all voting bodies and 75% of P-members approved the standard - both measures being above the needed thresholds of 75% and 66.7% respectively.

See also the following blog and media reactions today:

• Brian Jones: "The end of the file formats war"
• Jason Matusow: "Open XML is and international standard"
• Peter O'Kelly: "Ecma Office Open XML Document Format appears to win Approval as an ISO Standard"
• Computerworld: "Unofficial vote tallies show Open XML being ratified"
• CNet: "Unofficial document: Open XML passes ISO vote"
• ZDNet: "Microsoft wasting no time rejoicing in its OOXML win"

There is also an interesting story floating around that Norway allegedly seeks to reverse its Open XML vote to No - but that seems to be irrelevant given the high margins that the tallied outcome has over the minimum requirements for approval as a standard.

To get an early start working with Open XML (IS 29500), check out Altova's support for Open XML in our XMLSpy XML Editor.

You are also invited to read all previous articles on Open XML on this XML Aficionado blog - especially my January 30 tutorial post on Content reuse with Open XML and XSLT.

LANSA middle-ware integration builds on MapForce

Here is a cool story about an Altova partner, who recently integrated the MapForce mapping and data transformation user interface into their product.

LANSA is a development environment and suite of eBusiness solutions that organizations use to rapidly implement business systems that make effective use of new technologies. From its beginnings as a 4th generation language and repository-based development environment, LANSA has evolved to a family of products and solutions that support IBM iSeries (AS/400), Windows, UNIX and Linux platforms.

LANSA Composer is built on top of LANSA Integrator, the company’s integration toolkit that offers bi-directional data integration through XML, SOAP, and Java services, on IBM System i and other middle-ware platforms.

At its core, LANSA Composer utilizes the MapForce application as its transformation component:

For more details, see the LANSA Case Study on the Altova website for further information. Also, this integration is getting great reviews in the press. For an example, read this article in Database Trends and Applications.

Whitepaper on using Altova Tools with IBM DB2

Altova and IBM jointly published a whitepaper that shows how the integration of Altova tools with DB2 allows users to:

• Design and perfect XQuery statements faster, with real-time validation for a faster and more robust design time experience
• Preview, edit, and validate XML data stored in the database with just a few clicks
• Easily manage XML Schemas in the DB2 9 Schema Repository
• Map XML data from the database to a CSV file or convert it to an HTML table or other format

The solutions to the business problems presented in the whitepaper show how DBAs and developers working with real-world XML applications can benefit from the integration of Altova tools with IBM DB2.

Click here to download the whitepaper (PDF).

New Altova web site design

We just launched a cool new web site design for www.altova.com today:

It provides easier access to the most requested pages, cleaner navigation, and a more pleasing visual appearance. Go check it out at www.altova.com and let me know if you like it...

Content reuse with Open XML and XSLT

While Open XML may not yet be an ISO standard, it is already standardized by ECMA and - even more important - all documents created by Office 2007 are already stored in Open XML by default, so there is an abundance of documents whose content you can now reuse much more easily and productively than ever before. So instead of waiting for the ISO vote or paying too much attention to all the political battles being fought around it, I want to show you how you can already take advantage of Open XML (sometimes also called OOXML or Office Open XML) today.

This is the first article in a series of blog postings that I plan to write about practical Open XML tips & tricks, so I encourage you to subscribe to my XML Aficionado blog (via RSS or via e-mail), if you haven't already done so. This will ensure that you get future articles from this series automatically as soon as I post them.

So let's look at an Open XML document in our favorite XML Editor. For this example I am going to use a WordprocessingML document (.docx) that I have created with Microsoft Office Word 2007. When I open the .docx file in XMLSpy, I immediately get to see the contents of the package file, which is structured according to the Open Packaging Convention.

That's a fancy way of saying that it is a ZIP file that contains specific files and directories that make up the content, structure, styles, relationships, and other parts of the document. Using XMLSpy's built-in capability to open any ZIP-formatted archive, I can directly browse any directory structures inside the ZIP package, add new files to the package, or open any existing XML file contained in the package:

For the purpose of reusing the content from this WordprocessingML example file, I am going to open the 'document.xml' file, which contains the content of the document.

As soon as I double-click the file in the ZIP archive, the XML is displayed in a separate window just like any other XML document and I can use the powerful grid view or text view features of XMLSpy to view or edit the XML data (sometimes it may be useful to invoke the pretty-print function in text view to make the file more easily readable):

This is, of course, a live editing view, so you can not only view the Open XML data, but make any changes to the XML and save it back into the package file.

But now let's look at how we can easily reuse content from this Open XML document using XSLT. XMLSpy ships with a few Open XML example documents as well as example XSLT stylesheets for just that purpose. Let's look at the 'docx2html.xslt' stylesheet, which takes a WordprocessingML document and extracts all paragraphs to turn them into HTML. This example stylesheet is by no means intended to be a fully-featured conversion tool from .docx to HTML. Instead it serves as a blue-print of how to reuse content from a .docx file and hopefully will serve as a starting point for your stylesheet development efforts.

At the core of that XSLT stylesheet we need a <xsl:for-each> loop to iterate over all the <docx:p> elements, which it turns into simple HTML <p> paragraphs. The text inside the paragraphs is grouped into runs of characters that share common attributes, and so we need an inner <xsl:for-each> loop to iterate over those <docx:r> elements and extract the text from their <docx:t> text node children. Thus the most primitive content reuse that only extracts the text of all paragraphs looks like this:

Once we have constructed those loops, we can start to think about perhaps extracting and reusing some style information. To do that, we now emit a <span> HTML element for every <docx:r> run of characters and give it a style attribute, whose value will depend on the <docx:rPr> element, so we use <xsl:apply-templates> to decide what HTML style we want to apply to the <span> elements:

The corresponding templates for the three most common styles (bold, italic, underline) are trivially easy to construct and look like this:

With just a few lines of XSLT and a few templates we have already written a stylesheet that extracts the basic paragraphs and most important styles from a WordprocessingML document and turns them into HTML that can be viewed in the browser view - here is the result produced from running the above XSLT stylesheet on the example WordprocessingML document that you can find in the XMLSpy examples directory:

Similarly, it is quite easy to extend the stylesheet to extract meta information, other styles, or image information from the WordprocessingML document and reuse the content for any modern application scenario, from web publishing via HTML, RSS, or social media formats to mobile web applications and beyond.

"But wait! How can I apply an XSLT stylesheet to an XML document that is stored within a ZIP file?", you might ask.

You can, of course, extract all the XML files using a regular ZIP expander, but there is a much better solution: when you use the document() function in XSLT 2.0 within XMLSpy or with our royalty-free XSLT engine AltovaXML, you can directly access files contained in a ZIP archive by using the "|zip" pipe operator within the filename, e.g. "MyDocument.docx|zip\_rels\.rels" will address the Relationship file ".rels" in the archive directory "\_rels" inside the ZIP package with the file named "MyDocument.docx".

The benefits of using XSLT to reuse content from Open XML documents are obvious: because XSLT is a cornerstone of the core set of XML standards from the W3C, you can apply all your existing XML, XPath, and XSLT know-how and you can use the excellent tools support that is available for these standards. For example, you can easily develop and debug your XSLT stylesheet using the powerful XSLT debugger in XMLSpy, which allows you to single-step through the transformation, set breakpoints on XSLT instructions or even on data nodes in your Open XML document, view the partially generated output, and inspect the state of the XSLT processor in detail as the output document is constructed:

Using the XSLT Debugger eliminates a lot of the pain that is normally associated with XSLT stylesheet development and allows for a very iterative approach to creating and improving stylesheets that facilitate content reuse and repurposing.

To sum it up, reusing content from Open XML documents for a variety of web applications, mobile scenarios, or social media and Web 2.0 contexts is very easy and can be achieved with standard XML-related technologies, such as XSLT.

For additional information on Open XML and how to take advantage of all the content that is now already available in that format, please refer to the following sites:

• Open XML support in XMLSpy
• Download a free 30-day evaluation version of XMLSpy
• MSDN Open XML Formats Resource Center
• OpenXMLDeveloper.org
• Brian Jones: Open XML Formats (blog)

OOXML and ODF report from Burton Group: "What's Up, .DOC?"

Burton Group has released a new report "What’s Up, .DOC? ODF, OOXML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications" this week. Written by Peter O'Kelly (blog) and Guy Creese (blog), the report provides a deep and insightful analysis of the current state of ODF, OOXML, and other document formats (W3C, PDF), the history of those formats, and then continues to parse through the FUD and standardization games to arrive at a set of projections regarding the success of OOXML and ODF, as well as a set of practical recommendations.

I've read the report already, but am not going to spoil the fun for you and reveal all the conclusions here - the report is well worth your time and you should read it yourself! However, I will say this much: the report validates some of my thinking on the subject that I have expressed in various previous blog posts on OOXML here.

There is a quick overview of the report on the Burton Group's Collaboration and Content Strategies blog, and you can download the entire report for free after filling out a registration form.

Other early blog reactions to the new report are here:

• Burton Group report on ODF/OOXML will "ruffle some feathers"
• The coming OOXML showdown

And I am sure more blog reactions will follow next week.

As always, if you are interested in working with Office Open XML (OOXML) files, a great place to get started is to look at the OOXML support in XMLSpy and to download a free evaluation version of Altova's XML Editor and give it a try.

Semantic Web Killer App - where art thou?

Alex Iskold has a nice blog post today about the simple, but elusive question "Semantic Web: What is the Killer App?"

He looks at both the holy grail of classic A.I. applications, such as natural language understanding and what he calls the "genie in a bottle", and then proceeds to look at more realistic apps, such as semantic knowledge databases, semantic search, social graphs, and shortcuts.

On area that he misses is in the enterprise integration space and is sometimes called semantic mapping, ontology mapping, or semantic integration.

Other useful discussions of possible application areas and interesting adoptions are here:

• Semantic Web Adoption, W3C
• Semantic Web Application Areas, Division of Mathematics @ Free University Amsterdam and Oracle Corp
• Semantic Web Applications, MIT

So it seems that we still need to wait a bit for the killer app of the Semantic Web. One thing is clear, though: whoever creates that killer app will probably be using Altova SemanticWorks for their RDF and OWL editing, and ontology creation in the process. While the killer app is not here yet, the perfect developer tool to create that killer app already exists... :)

Best Christmas Present Ever

The holiday season is upon us and today we did a little Christmas (and Hanukkah) celebration in the office. I got the Best Christmas Present Ever from the entire staff here at Altova, Inc.:

These are authentic Fenway Park Bleacher Seats, removed in November 2007, and they come complete with certificate of authenticity, holographic authentication stickers, and - most important of all - some chewing gum still stuck on the bottom.

As part of their renovation program for Fenway Park, the Red Sox did apparently sell the old seats to fans, and the gang here at Altova managed to pull off the impossible and get me a pair.

For the time being I am keeping them in my office - until the new house is ready in a few years - and we've rearranged the furniture to make them part of the seating area. That way they will actually be used for our weekly team meetings and are also available for visitors.

If you want to know how happy I am about these seats, just look at the grin on my face in this picture to the left.

Thank you guys! You've really made my day!!

XML 2007 (or not), IE8, and Google on the iPhone

XML 2007 ended in Boston today and despite planning to go to the conference today, I unfortunately missed the event due to some time constraints at work. Elliotte Rusty Harold blogged from the conference (thank you!), and he was asking if nobody else was reporting live from the event. Well, I was planning to do so, but couldn't. Sorry.

The one talk that I had really wanted to go to was by Irina Kogan (IBM) and Dr. Nick Nagel (Altova) who spoke on "XML-Driven Database Design and Information Retrieval" this afternoon - fortunately the presentation slides can be found here so I can read up on what I missed.

In other interesting news today:

• Bill Gates semi-announced Internet Explorer 8 to bloggers
• There is now a "wicked cool" iPhone version of the Google Mobile website

I've already played with the Google interface on the iPhone and it is really nicely done. I get Google search, GMail, and Reader all nicely integrated and with a slick iPhone like UI.

Where in the world...

... was the XML Aficionado, when he took this photo today:

It is indeed a grim place, and it is no secret that this is somewhere in Vienna, Austria (since that is quite obviously where I've spent this week - as can be seen in recent blog postings). But the question is: where in Vienna, and what place is this? I'll provide just one hint: DiffDog would have loved that place.

Be the first one to comment on this XML Aficionado blog with the correct answer, and you'll win one single-user license of Altova DiffDog 2008, the essential differencing and merging utility for developers.

Disclaimer: all blog comments subject to review; prize cannot be exchanged for cash; void where prohibited; winner responsible for all taxes and dues; employees of Altova GmbH and Altova Inc as well as Falk family members are eligible to participate, since the location of the above photo is only known to me personally and I was alone when taking that photo; batteries not included; no animal was harmed in the taking of the above photo; if you are reading this, then you (a) are probably a lawyer and/or (b) don't need any glasses...

IBM Information-On-Demand XML Highlights

I am writing this quick report from the airport lounge in San Francisco, as I am waiting for my flight to Frankfurt and onward to Vienna for a week of meetings at Altova GmbH's headquarters in Austria. You just have to love Wi-Fi access - how did we ever get anything done before the Internet, laptops, Wi-Fi networks, and blogs?

With a week of conference sessions and trade show work in Las Vegas behind me, here is a quick summary of what I perceived to be some of the highlights of IBM's Information-On-Demand show from an XML Aficionado's perspective:

IBM announced DB2 version 9.5 (scheduled to ship October 31st), which contains several feature enhancements to the pureXML functionality, including inlining of XML, compression, several performance improvements for transactional XML, and the first implementation of XQuery Update in a major database. The last bit is probably the most interesting, because of the lack of updating capabilities in the original XQuery specs, which was exclusively focused on queries (analog to the SELECT statement in SQL). XQuery Update provides the ability to insert, delete, or update any node, i.e. potentially just one single element or attribute in the database, which should provide a huge difference to current implementation, where the entire XML document typically needs to be written back to a column in the database.

Altova's Nick Nagel, spoke on XML-Driven Data Management in a Developer Den session on Wednesday, which was well-attended. Nick's presentation addressed a "top-down" approach to data modeling using XSD (XML Schema Definition language) as a data modeling language with implications for data storage and retrieval as pureXML in DB2. Nick spoke on how XSD in turn can drive process implementation serving as formal design document, and how XML facilitates process development by enabling automated data binding, data mapping, as well as storage and retrieval with XPath 2.0 and XQuery. He also showed several screenshots on how Altova's tools can make working with XML in DB2 easier for developers.

IBM's Berni Schiefer conducted a Birds of a Feather session on Performance Tips, Conundrums and Experiences with DB2, where he answered customer questions and spoke in-depth about performance tuning of DB2, including tuning for pureXML. He also gave a few other interesting talks, but I did unfortunately not have time to attend those.

There were also plenty of interesting customer talks about how they are using XML, as well as more in-depth sessions on various aspects of pureXML in DB2, but my flight is boarding in a few minutes, so I don't have enough time to report on those anymore.

XML Aficionado in the News

Two articles hit the news today that are based in part on interviews with the XML Aficionado:

• The X Factor (by Michael Desmond) in Redmond Developer News
• Am Anfang War Das Schema (by Dr. Peter Zschunke) in Associated Press Germany

The former is a detailed analysis of the OOXML vs. ODF controversy from a developer's perspective, including interviews with Burton Group analyst Peter O'Kelly, Microsoft's Brian Jones, and me.

The latter is a review of the new Altov XMLSpy 2008 release (in German).

Altova releases Version 2008 of the entire product line

I am very excited! This new release is packed to the brim with new features like XInclude and XPointer support, two-step XSL:FO transformations to allow use of XSL:FO with XSLT 2.0, evaluating XPath across multiple files, direct editing of database data, extended support for Office Open XML file formats, and speed and memory footprint improvements when working with large files in XMLSpy; aggregate data processing and value-map functions in MapForce; refactoring and modularization support as well as enhanced database functionality in StyleVision; Visual Basic .NET code engineering and real-time integration with Visual Studio and Eclipse in UModel; support for editing database views and stored procedures in DatabaseSpy; one-click directory synchronization and binary differencing in DiffDog; and much more.

We've really listened to our customers and implemented many of these features based on their direct feedback. I'm sure that you will find many of these enhancements and new features indispensible for your every-day work with XML, UML, and database technolgies. Make sure that you check out the MissionKit for Software Architects bundle, which includes all of our products in one convenient package.

In addition, you'll find common enhancements across the entire product line, such as upgraded support for Unicode 4.1, support for Widows Vista, an improved database connection wizard, and more.

For complete details see the press release, our What's New page, or simply download the free 30-day evaluation version. Also seen on the Altova News RSS feed.

Let me know what you think about the new features - post your comments directly on my XML Aficionado blog.

Office Open XML fails to win ISO approval (so far)

This week Microsoft failed to win ISO approval for the Office Open XML (OOXML) standard in the 2nd round of the ISO standardization process. While the Wall Street Journal published a critical article about this, this is by no means the end of the road, nor is it even a major setback - the ISO process commonly requires multiple rounds, and the 3rd round (expected for early 2008) will very likely see Office Open XML becoming an ISO standard.

As Burton Group analyst Peter O'Kelly observes in his blog: "FWIW I still expect Open XML to become an ISO standard -- and it's reassuring to see the spec/design improved by the standardization process." - I couldn't agree more.

Irrespective of the timeline of this ISO standardization process, I expect OOXML to quickly become a de-facto standard as more and more corporations and enterprises upgrade from Office XP or 2003 to Office 2007 and start generating tons of documents in the new OOXML formats (which is the default setting for new Office 2007 file).

Having all these Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc. available in OOXML lays the groundwork for a huge increase in content reuse and repurposing, because the data - being XML - can now be accessed through other applications, transformed through stylesheets, and integrated with other enterprise data.

To get started with OOXML, software developers can simply open OOXML documents in XMLSpy and start working with the XML data inside, then use XMLSpy to create and debug XSLT 2.0 stylesheets that directly access the OOXML data through the AltovaXML processing engine.