More XML Tools Released by IBM

May 25, 2005 – Several new XML Development tool plug-ins were released by IBM on Wednesday, May 4, 2005. IBM claimed that these new releases were made in support to the strict specifications of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium. The new XML development tool plug-ins will be released to IBM’s Eclipse framework, adding multimedia and forms generation capabilities.

One of the features of the new XML tools is designed as a compound XML document editor. This feature lets developers generate documents that contain multiple formats such as text, graphics and voice. Indeed there are numerous XML editors for producing documents in dialects like Voice XML but IBM claims that the new XML tool is the first tool with the ability to merge different rendering formats in the same document.

Moreover, an XML forms generator will also be released by IBM. This XML tool can be used for exposing web services via the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) standard. These new tools are available for free download to developers via the IBM AlphaWorks portal. They are made available as part of a strategy to cultivate developer support of Eclipse tools.

IBM’s newly released XML tools is an addition to a growing list of XML editors. Many of these editors are available as open source programs or add-ons for development environments like Microsoft Visual Studio. Meanwhile, full-function commercial tools such as Altovas XML Suite provide comprehensive capabilities, ranging from graphical XML schema editors and automated schema validation to XSLT, Xpath and Xquery. XSLT stands for XML Style Transformations. Xpath is a language for describing an XML document structure. Also, the Altovas XML Suite is used for automated mapping of data to EDI or relational databases.

In relation to IBM’s release of XML Development tool plug-ins, the company is also proposing XML enhancements for Java to the Java Community Process (JCP). These proposed extensions will have a result wherein objects in XML documents become readable without parsing the entire document.

IBM stipulated that with this proposed feature, Java XML parses could simply focus on objects that have changed instead of having to read everything. This capability could speed performance and save time. IBM has already floated up its proposal to the JCP. However, JCP has not yet decided whether to approve a formal Java Standards request (JSR) effort. -30-

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