Altova announced "Version 2008" updates of 11 tools in its product lineup, which includes XMLSpy, UModel, DatabaseSpy, MapForce, StyleVision, SemanticWorks and others. The list of new features includes support for Microsoft's Office Open XML format, validation of XInclude and XPointer statements, improved database functionality, and integration into the Visual Studio .NET or Eclipse IDEs.
XMLSpy 2008 can now query, validate, and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 data saved as OOXML files. It can also generate new Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents from scratch. XMLSpy uses the AltovaXML engine to extract and execute XSLT and XQuery transformations on OOXML files. It also supports multiple-file, XPath expression analysis for generating and testing XPath expressions. Additionally Altova has improved XMPSpy's ability to handle large XML files, reducing memory consumption and improving file-access performance. XMLSpy also includes a Database Query tool to edit data within any database supporting ADO or ODBC connectivity, such as Oracle, DB2, or SQL Server.
Other Altova tools share these XML and data access improvements and also have new features of their own. For example, UModel 2008, Altova's UML modeling tool, now includes integrated, bi-directional synchronization with source code in VS.NET or Eclipse IDEs, support for VB.NET (as well as the previously supported Java and C#), and improved management of complex sequence diagrams. And DatabaseSpy 2008 now includes support for modifying and executing stored procedures. It also has improvements to its Design Editor, which lets you view and edit relationships between tables graphically. For more information on the Version 2008 upgrades, visit www.altova.com.
