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Re: XML IDE: What are the top 3 and why?

• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: XML IDE: What are the top 3 and why?
• From: "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@a...>
• Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 15:12:12 +1000
• References: <4DBDB4044ABED31183C000508BA0E97F040ABE08@f...>

From: "Mark Feblowitz" <mfeblowitz@f...>

> I'm not saying that XML Spy is perfect. There are some things that it just
> punts on. I was merely commenting on its effectiveness as a Schema authoring
> tool. 

Actually, anyone who write an XML Schema is certainly well advised to
also have a schema-validating tool different from the one they are using
for development and maintenance, just for the reason that implementations
regularly differ.  For contracts, specify that documents must validate against
a schema, and specify at least two validators. 

For example, only this week we had a beta-tester report that the version
of Xerces we use in another product does not allow a reference to an attribute 
definition to be "fixed" when the attribute definition already says fixed. That one
problem showed up 561 times in their schema: very confusing. 

XML Schemas is just too big.  Formalization does not necesarily help
developers track down bugs.  It needs to be modularized or trimmed.
Make support for key/uniqueness, nillability, xsi:type and restriction
an extra conformance level,  for example.

Good tools to use include
  - XSV
  - IBM's Schema Quality Checker
  - Topologi Schematron Validator (uses MSXML)  http://www.topologi.com/
which are all free. 

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

• References:
  • RE: XML IDE: What are the top 3 and why?
    • From: Mark Feblowitz <mfeblowitz@f...>

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