Altova StyleVision 2007

asp:review

Altova StyleVision 2007

XML Publishing Tool for Designers, not Developers

By Matt Dinovo

XML editors are a dime a dozen. Literally hundreds ofniche and general editors exist in the marketplace to create, edit, and/ortransform XML documents. From this vast landscape of XML editing tools fromwhich to choose, the XML products from Altova, such as the venerable XMLSpy,have consistently been regarded as the best of the breed.

Altova s XML editor portfolio contains various editors tomanage XML documents, create and edit schemas, perform XML differencing, andgenerate data mappings. Altova s entry for creating and editing stylesheets aspart of this portfolio is StyleVision. More specifically, Altova StyleVision2007 is designed to create and edit StyleVision Power Stylesheets (SPS)documents. The SPS format primarily is used to control the display and entry ofXML documents in conjunction with a freely downloadable tool from Altova (namedAuthentic). However, a secondary function of the SPS document format is tospecify the output of an XML transformation. So, in this way, one couldconsider StyleVision to be an XSLT editor, as StyleVision gives you the abilityto save the XSLT file generated from the SPS document. However, I feel this isnot its intended use, nor should you consider it as such.

The first thing you notice when you create a newStyleVision document is that you need to have a preexisting XSD or DTD schema,HTML file, or database from which to build. You can elect to create a blank SPSdocument with no source specified, but your available options are few. Fromthese inputs, your toolbox of design elements is created. This is integral tothe overall layout of the workspace. On the left side of the screen are theschema source pane, which is the node tree extrapolated from an importedfile/database, and the design tree, which contains operations and properties ofthe SPS document. In the center of the interface is the design surface itself.This surface is a WYSIWYG editor of sorts that offers multiple views of thedocument as you create it (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Altova StyleVision s interface.

From the design surface you can preview the output inAuthentic, HTML, RTF, or PDF format. However, one thing to note is that the PDFpreview requires an XSL-FO (formatting objects) processor that you provide(there are several available on the Internet). Documents are created bydragging-and-dropping elements and attributes from the schema source pane ontothe design surface. Additionally, you can enter other text, include pictures,and do some rudimentary formatting (bold, italic, etc.) using the built-ineditor. There is a built-in style editor for more advanced formatting, thoughit should be noted that StyleVision is not a CSS editor. You can importexternal CSS files to use in your SPS project, but any embedded styles youcreate will not be exported as a separate CSS file.

It is also important to note that StyleVision does notexclusively work with XML documents. StyleVision also has the ability toconnect to various database sources through ADOand interpret the database schema in much the same way it interprets XSDdocuments (as shown in Figure 2).

Figure 2: StyleVision s SelectTable dialog box.

Once the selected tables have been analyzed, the rowinformation shows up in the schema source pane. You can then drag databasefields onto the design surface like you would with XSD elements/attributes.What is interesting about this database functionality is that when you dragover database fields, a row-navigator template is automatically created. Whenyou view the published document in Authentic, you can navigate through all therecords in an application-like fashion. However, in HTML view, all therecords are written out. This is important, because if you publish adatabase-backed document as HTML, the data is static it is simply a snapshotof the data at the time of document creation. Viewing the document in Authenticis interactive, and you ll see the current data and not the data as it was whenyou created the SPS document.

This brings me to a critical point: StyleVision is, at itscore, intended to be used in conjunction with Altova s Authentic product.Authentic is a standalone or browser-based form input tool that lets users fillin forms created from SPS documents. In this way, one can give users astructured user interface that contains validation logic; an advanced UI suchas combo and list boxes that, when filled, results in a raw XML file adheringto a particular schema. StyleVision allows users to embed these advancedformatting and scripting features into the SPS document itself. Some of theadvanced formatting can be exported to HTML outputs, as well, but I don t seemuch value in doing that unless you re going to use the generated output as aform in a Web application.

While ultimately I became comfortable with StyleVision, ittook a long time to get me there. For a developer like me, using a WYSIWYGparadigm to create XML transforms feels unnatural. This is made worse by thedragging-and-dropping of elements. To get things formatted the way I wantedtook multiple checks of my preview as I was creating a document to verifythat I got the formatting or styles correct.

After using this product, it is my opinion that it is nota development tool, nor do I believe it is really intended for use bydevelopers. This product is intended for designers who need to publishdocuments, because, at its heart, StyleVision is a publishing tool. If you haveno need for Authentic (and quite a bit of the value proposition is diminishedif you aren t planning to use Authentic) and are not needing to publish XMLdata in HTML, RTF, or PDF format, then this tool is not for you. StyleVision isnot a general-purpose XSLT tool. You cannot transform to alternate XML formats,nor can you edit the generated XSLT you can view a read-only version throughthe HTML preview. If you need to do these kinds of tasks, then one of the manyother, more developer-focused XML/XSLT editors is a better choice. However, ifyou want to publish raw XML data as a finished document, then StyleVision,after you get past the learning curve, is a capable tool to have in yourtoolbox.

Matt Dinovo is aSenior Solution Developer at Avanade Inc., a Seattle-based integrator forMicrosoft technology that is a joint venture between Accenture Ltd. andMicrosoft. You can visit his blog at http://mattdinovo.spaces.live.com.

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Web Site: http://www.altova.com

Price: Startsat US$499