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Integration Watch: Remember good tools at low cost?

By Andrew Binstock

October 1, 2008 — (Page 1 of 2)

I’ve wanted to write a column for a long time about the myriad little software packages I use to make my life easier. Like most readers of this column, I suspect, I rely on lots of small, elegant utilities that take care of a task in a simple, efficient manner. I am a big fan of these “applets”—which would be the better term were it not already hijacked by other well-known technologies.

Once a chosen applet migrates into my permanent inventory of tools, I always send a contribution to the author—either the expected fee or, in the case of free software, a donation. A fun wiki would be the list of people’s top 10 such utilities for, say, encryption, to-do lists, contact management, video viewing and the like. The list for software development would include such items as Web page designers, test tools, reporting tools, project dashboards, defect identifiers, defect trackers and CI servers. Invariably, we would all discover that our prized to-do list manager, for example, is far inferior to another one we’ve never heard of.

In days of yore, most software development tools fit in one category: They were comparatively inexpensive and were sold by many small, specialized vendors. Articles such as “C compiler shootouts” were regular (and highly awaited) features of magazines such as Computer Language and, to a lesser extent, Dr. Dobb’s Journal.

Today, of course, tools are either free or terribly expensive; there is little middle ground. And there are very few small vendors of tools, with the notable exception of the components market for Windows applications—but those are more libraries than pure tools.

One vendor, however, that has persevered making great niche tools at remarkably approachable prices is Altova, which has put out a variety of interesting products for a long time. Its flagship product, XMLSpy, is the standard-setter for XML file editing. It facilitates editing using a variety of display formats; validates documents via schemas and DTDs (Document Type Definition); has built-in editors, debuggers and profilers for XSLT and XQuery; and offers the ability to access most major databases, parse OOXML files, and generate Java, C# and C++ code for XML manipulation. XMLSpy starts at US$149 and, depending on features, can reach $1,200. A steal.

Related Search Term(s): modeling, XML, Altova

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