14 DAY TRIAL // Nowadays, we live in a world where information is everything and the faster we get access to it, the more power we have. Considering the fact that the only place we know that has the greatest amount of information gathered in the same place is the Internet, the ones that have the upper hand in this case are those that get the information in the shortest period of time. Since this is no doubt true, imagine you had a tool that allowed you to interrogate files for the exact information you needed and, furthermore, that those files had the same structure all over the Internet.
These files that can be easily interrogated are XML files and are a standardization of data structuring. If you were to have a tool that enabled you to extract and create these types of files, then you could reduce your time and costs to a minimum. Such a tool is oXygen XML Editor and XSLT Debugger.
Using this application, you can not only create your own XML files, but you can also attach XSL interrogations to them. The main reason why XML files have been introduced was because of the need to have structured data and, at the same time, fast and easy access to certain information without having to scroll through unwanted text.
This application has the ability to provide you with simple examples of how to create and validate XML files by using the W3C standards. The goal of this program is to allow users to create a highly structured database file that does not need to run on an Oracle server and that can be interrogated with a few simple lines of code.
These files have been created so that they can facilitate access to information over the Internet and, as such, their content can be fully processed and viewed by using a web browser. oXygen XML Editor and XSLT Debugger has the ability to create such files while, at the same time, it can extract specific information from them by enabling users to create XSLT interrogation files.
An XSLT file is written in a certain coding language, so that it can open a designated XML and search for specific information in that file. Now, it is obvious to see that oXygen XML Editor and XSLT Debugger has more than just the ability to create XML files, as it can also create the necessary interrogation files.
What makes this application so powerful is its ability to debug a designated XSLT interrogation file. This may not seem very important, but trust me when I say that when the time comes to trace a coding mistake in a XSLT file, you will definitely need all the help you can get to try to locate it. There are lots of XML editors on the market, but none of them has the ability to actually parse the XSLT file for errors and track down syntax errors.
This application has the ability to let you view all the attributes for a specific tag and, at the same time, all the elements that are connected to it. This allows you to have a tree view over the elements and their attributes. This feature may come in handy when writing large XML files because you might forget what tag to close.
Another important feature of the application is that it can open and export files formants such as DTD, JAVA, PEARL, PHP, CPP, SQL and even JAVA Scripts. This makes it not only a powerful XML editing tool, but also a comprehensive web programming application. If we are to talk about the code editing options, we can only say that it will rise up to your expectations because it has the ability to change font size and color to make certain keywords pop up.
Besides these features, what sets it apart from other applications that offer the same functionality is the fact that it can validate XSL documents by using more than one validation engine. oXygen XML Editor and XSLT Debugger allows users to choose from Saxon, JAXP or Xalan to validate their interrogation documents. This feature can be more than useful especially when you are compelled by certain web servers to use a certain XSLT validator.
Considering that the price of this application is $225, it is my humble opinion that it is well worth the money. You can't get anything better than this when it comes to features and reliability. In a world where professionalism and quality are the keys to success, oXygen comes as a "breath of fresh air."
The Good
oXygen XML Editor and XSLT Debugger is great because it has the ability to debug XSLT interrogation files. This feature is very useful mainly because this type of errors take a lot of time to track down.
The Bad
While it provides advanced debugging and XML-XLS editing tools, it has menus and sub-menus that can easily confuse beginners.
The Truth
This is a very powerful tool for editing and creating XML and XSLT interrogations. The debugging feature of the application allows you to easily correct any syntax or coding error, thus reducing the amount of time necessary to track down the error yourself.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
