The Stylus Scoop March 2006 - Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 Available Now!

Dear Stylus Studio Friend,

Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 XML Enterprise Edition is now available, brimming with the powerful new features and enhancements – many from customers – that you've come to expect from the world's most innovative XML IDE. We're confident that Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 XML Enterprise Edition will radically simplify your next data integration project, so give it a try for free today.

Also this month, we've got new online video tutorials on XML Schema development, webcasts, and competitive product information. All good stuff, to be sure, but the feature we're most proud of is the one sent in by a Stylus Studio user, reporting how Stylus Studio is lending a helping hand in the hurricane Katrina reconstruction efforts in New Orleans. All this and more in this month's Stylus Scoop!

Sincerely,
Ivan Pedruzzi
Sr. Product Architect
The Stylus Studio Team


Table of Contents:


Now Available: Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 XML Enterprise Edition

Download a free trial of the latest and greatest release of the award-winning, industry-standard XML development environment, Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 XML Enterprise Edition today.

Q: What's new in this release?
A: In a nutshell: We've added a ton of new support working with EDI, XQuery, Web Services, and XSLT – and we've enhanced support for deploying your XML applications using DataDirect XML Converters.

Q: And why should I care?
A: We're confident that the new tools and components will simplify many engineering tasks, saving you time and money. (It will, if you'll pardon the pun, transform the way you work with XML!) And who doesn't want to save time and money?

Q: Tell me more about these XML Converters.
A: XML Converters are highly scalable Java components that make it possible to extend your XSLT and XQuery applications to access non-XML data, including thousands of different EDI/EDIFACT/X12 – and now, IATA – formats, binary data, text files, and any other legacy data formats. DataDirect XML Converters are great for creating customized data integration applications, and they're faster and easier to embed then ever before.

Q: How can I purchase Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 XML Enterprise Edition?
A: Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 XML Enterprise Edition is available for online purchase starting at just $795 for a single user license – you get everything on the feature list, in one powerful product at this great low price. For volume licensing, contact our sales department.

Working with XML Schemas in Stylus Studio

Stylus Studio provides the world's most intuitive and powerful XML Schema tools for all your XML data modeling needs. A new online video demonstration provides a comprehensive overview of this easy-to-master tool set. An Introduction XML Schema Development in Stylus Studio covers the following topics:

Watch the video demonstration today for free!

The Stylus Studio QuickStart Training Webcast

The Stylus Studio QuickStart Training Webcast is a great way to learn how to use our powerful XML tools and data access components to develop standards-based data integration applications. Join us this Thursday for a live presentation covering the following topics:

  • An introduction to working with XML files in Stylus Studio
  • Accessing and integrating relational data as XML
  • Converting non-XML files including CSV and EDI to XML
  • Using the XML Schema, XSLT and XQuery Editors.
  • How to deploy your XML applications
  • Ask your own questions!

The Stylus Studio QuickStart Training Webcast runs this Thursday at 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5). Sign up today!

Competitive Product Information

This month, Stylus Studio asks an open question to the XML community: Just how slow is the competition, anyway? Several weeks ago, we posted a review of competitors, a proprietary XML processor used in other tools. We stated that in our own informal performance tests, the competiton was an order of magnitude slower than the Saxon XML processor. These findings were independently corroborated. Here's what an IT consultant specializing in financial XML and data modeling observed: "I was doing a small XML task, regrouping the information in a document into a different structure... I was using a competitive product to write and run a suitable XSLT 2.0 transformation. Eventually, though, I found a bug in the implementation of grouping functions... I switched to my laptop ... I selected Saxon 8B as the XSLT 2.0 engine. It ran the stylesheet correctly, but more importantly, it ran at least ten times faster than the native code implementation in the competition. Now, that is something I wasn't expecting. This is the first time where I have seen a huge performance boost by moving from a native code solution to a Java solution ... they can no longer claim an automatic performance advantage." (Click here to read the full quotation)

So how slow is the competition? It's difficult to say with real certainty as it doesn't provide any integrated XSLT or XQuery profiling tools like Stylus Studio does.

Stylus Studio: Helping Hurricane Katrina Reconstruction Efforts

Last September, millions of lives were changed in a day by a cruel and wasteful storm. Today, reconstruction efforts are ongoing, and we're proud to note that Stylus Studio is able to perform a small but important role in the Gulf Coast's recovery. Rafiki Cai, co-founder of the Digital Freedom Institute (DFI) and a Stylus Studio user, wrote to tell us how Stylus Studio is helping:

"I'm on the ground in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, working as a volunteer, on the rebuilding of the area after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the consequent breeching of the levees. We have hundreds of volunteers that are flowing into the city. We're developing a system to automate the process whereby when a volunteer is entered into our CRM database they are also plotted on to the Volunteer Map. Stylus Studio has the tools and utilities to help us develop the mapping solution that we needed, enabling us create the underlying systems infrastructure needed to facilitate rebuilding this great city."

We've always known we had a powerful and innovative XML IDE, one that's helped us look into the solar system and provide insurance to millions of people, but we're hard-pressed to think of any use of Stylus Studio that makes us prouder. Thank you, Rafiki, for taking time to share your story with us. We wish you, and everyone involved in the Gulf Coast recovery, all the best.

True Stylus Studio Stories:

In this week's issue of CRN Magazine, Mario Morejon, Technical Editor at CRN Test Center writes:  "[Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2] is powerful and unlike its competitors, follows most XML development standards ... Stylus' XML Schema editor is simple to use ... Stylus Studio leads the industry in adhering to most leading XML parsers and validators [providing] integrated support for Apache's Xalan-J, Microsoft's MSXML .Net, and Saxon 6 and 8, [as well as] its own XSLT processor. In addition, developers can use Microsoft's MSXML DOM and SAX parsers, .Net XML parser and Apache's Xerces-J ... CRN engineers were impressed with the implementation of XQuery and its integration with Stylus' XML mapping technology."

Tell us why you use Stylus Studio! Email us and we'll respond!

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