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Stylus Studio Release 5.1 Release Notes
These release notes contain information specific to Stylus Studio Release 5.1, (referred to in these notes as "this release").
Installation Information — By installing this release you agree to accept the terms and conditions of the Stylus Studio End User Product License Agreement.
These release notes contain the following sections:
What's New in Stylus Studio Release 5.1
Stylus Studio Release 5.1 provides the following new features:
- Access to Relational Databases: Now you can query relational databases directly from Stylus Studio, render query results as XML, and write data back to the database. Query results returned by the DB to XML data source you define can be used in Stylus Studio anywhere you use an XML document. Using the intuitive DB-to-XML Data Source editor, you create a DB to XML data source which contains The connection settings you need to connect to the database server, the name of the database you want to query, And the SQL/XML you want to execute once you are connected.
The DB to XML Data Source editor makes it easy to compose SQL/XML. WHen you connect to a database, the editor displays a tree showing the tables and columns associated with that database. To create SELECT, INSERT, and UPDATE statements, you just drag the object and drop it on the editor's SELECT or UPDATE tabs, and Stylus Studio does the rest.
Stylus Studio supports several popular databases, such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Informix, DB2, and Sybase. And you can use DataDirect SequeLink, which is bundled with Stylus Studio, to connect to any ODBC-compliant database.
- XSLT Mapper Enhancements: The XSLT mapper has been greatly enhanced for Release 5.1, incorporating many of the powerful ease-of-use features of the popular XQuery mapper. The XSLT mapper allows you to graphically compose a stylesheet -- complete with comples XSLT instruction, XPath functions, user-defined Java functions, and logical operators -- without writing any code. As you build your stylesheet in the mapper, you can toggle to the XSLT Source tab in the XSLT editor and see the code that Stylus Studio is writing for you. You can make changes and additions directly to the source and see those changes reflected in the mapper when you display it. Other improvements to the XSLT mapper in Release 5.1 include GUI tools to speed creation of named and matched templates and Filters that allow you to display only those links that have been defined for the current template.
- Support for the W3C November 2003 XQuery Specification: Stylus Studio's XQuery processor has been significantly upgraded to support all new functions and grammar changes established by the November 2003 W3C XQuery Specification.
- Support for XPath 2.0: The XML editor now supports both XPath 1.0 and XPath 2.0. The default XPath processor supports Xpath 1.0, but you can change to 2.0 by clicking a button on the XML editor toolbar.
- Web Service Call Scenarios: The Web Service Call Composer now lets you create scenarios to determine which SOAP clients perform best in your application environment. SOAP clients supported in Stylus Studio 5.1 include MS SOAP Toolkit, MS .NET, and Apache Axis
- Catalog Support Enhancements: Stylus Studio Release 5.1 continues to strengthen its industry-leading catalog support with six new catalogs and updates to eleven -- 87 catalogs in all, and well over 2,200 schemas, *.ent and *.mod supporting files and *.xml tables. Enhancements for Release 5.1 include the addition of National Retail Federation's Association for Retail Technology Standards catalog, Sun J2EE 1.4 schemas, Web services and WS-I schemas, including WS-Managability, WS-AtomicTransaction, and WS-Coordination, OASIS Common Alerting Protocol standard support, Electronic Markup Code schemas, Electronic Markup Code schemas
Known Issues with This Release
Stylus Studio Release 5.1 has the following known issues:
SequeLink
When you connect to a database using the DB-to-XML Data Source editor, Stylus Studio displays a tree diagram of the database's tables and columns. Some ODBC data sources accessible using DataDirect SequeLink do not render database information in a format known to the tree diagram. For these data sources, no tree diagram is displayed. You can still write SQL/XML statements against the database, however.
Built-In XSLT Processor Limitations
The limitations listed in this section do not apply to the Saxon, XalanJ, and MSXML .NET XSLT processors. These processors are fully supported for processing and debugging in this release.
The Stylus Studio built-in XSLT processor supports the W3C XSLT Recommendation except for the following features:
- xsl:apply-imports instruction.
- xsl:number localization features.
- Some xsl:output attributes. The following xsl:output attributes have no effect: version, standalone, cdata-section-elements, media-type. The following xsl:output attributes are supported: method, indent, encoding, doctype-public, and doctype-system.
- xsl:preserve-space instruction.
- xsl:strip-space instruction. While Stylus Studio does not support the xsl:strip-space instruction, Stylus Studio automatically strips text nodes that contain only white space.
- Simplified stylesheet syntax described in the XSLT Recommendation, Section 2.3. (The simplified syntax is not needed when you are using Stylus Studio to edit a stylesheet.)
- xsl:sort attributes lang and case-order.
- Extension element mechanism described in the XSLT Recommendation, Section 14. (Stylus Studio does support the extension function mechanism.)
Use of the format-number() function requires a JVM that is installed on your system and accessible by Stylus Studio.
XPath 1.0 Processor Limitations
The Stylus Studio XPath processor implementation includes a behavior that deviates from the XPath 1.0 recommendation. This behavior, however, is consistent with the DOM data model.
- Adjacent text and/or CDATA nodes are not merged.
- The DOM data model allows sequences of text nodes. The XPath data model does not. If a sequence of text nodes appears in an XML document, the XPath recommendation specifies that an XPath processor should process them as one text node.
- The Stylus Studio XPath processor returns consecutive text nodes as multiple, distinct text nodes.
MSXML Compatibility
The Stylus Studio XSLT processor supports the use of extension functions in stylesheets. Other than this feature, the Stylus Studio XSLT processor and the Microsoft Internet Explorer XSLT processor are compatible. If you want to use your stylesheet with the Microsoft MSXML XSLT processor, do not specify extension functions in your stylesheet.
Miscellaneous
- When Stylus Studio processes a stylesheet that declares a CDATA section as the value of a variable, Stylus Studio converts the CDATA section to text.
- When Stylus Studio reads an XML or XSL file that contains all English characters, it defaults to a font that cannot display Japanese. If you add Japanese characters and then save, close, and reopen the document, Stylus Studio uses a font that can display the Japanese characters.
- Javadoc for the custom file system API is unavailable at this time.
Installing DataDirect SequeLink Server
This section describes how to install DataDirect SequeLink Server. You need to install DataDirect SequeLink Server if you want to create a DB to XML data source for a database that is not already supported by Stylus Studio (such as Microsoft Access, for example). You need only to install the SequeLink Server; the SequeLink Client is installed automatically, as part of the Stylus Studio installation.
Executables and User Documentation
The installation executables and user documentation for DataDirect SequeLink Server is available in two places:
- As a Stylus Studio download. This link downloads a self-extracting file to your computer. When you run the file, it unpacks the installation setup.exe file and user documentation for DataDirect SequeLink Server to the location you specify.
- In the \DataDirect\SequeLinkServer5.4. directory on the Stylus Studio installation CD-ROM. This directory contains the setup.exe you use to install DataDirect SequeLink Server, and a portal page, index.htm, for the DataDirect SequeLink Server user documentation.
Installation Summary:
- Obtain the DataDirect SequeLink files from the Stylus Studio download page or installation CD-ROM.
- Read the user documentation.
- Run the DataDirect SequeLink Server setup.exe.
When the installation is complete, the ODBC drivers you configured are available as DB to XML data sources in the Database Type drop-down list in the DB to XML Data Source editor.
Third-Party Code
This release includes the following third-party software:
- XSLT software developed by the Apache Software Foundation
- Xerces C++ XML Parser, also from Apache
- FOP, also from Apache
- Dave Raggett's HTML Tidy
- IBM's International Components for Unicode
- Trang Schema converter from Thai Open Source Software Center, Ltd.
- XML Schema Validator (XSV), developed at the Language Technology Group of the Human Communication Research Centre in the Division of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, with support from the World Wide Web Consortium.
- DTDs and XML Schemas developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, Keio University).
- DataDirect Technologies
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