[WinPartners] XML Development Environment

[Stephen Dowdy]

Folks,

OSP is in the process of converting a large Powerbuilder application to a 
Java application.  We've worked through many issues.  However, printing, 
schema creation/management, style sheet creation, etc. remain 
burdensome.  One of our collaborates created one printable form by 
hand.  It is over 10,000 lines of code.

We have decided that we are going to purchase xmlspy.    According to the 
vendor, xmlspy is an "XML development environment for designing, editing 
and debugging enterprise-class applications involving XML, XML Schema, 
XSL/XSLT, SOAP, WSDL and Web Services technologies. It is the ultimate 
productivity enhancer for J2EE".

We have downloaded the 30-day free trial and the product is very, very 
impressive.

You can see the various product feature list at:
http://www.altova.com/matrix.html

There are three versions of the software:
https://shop.altova.com/category.asp?catalog%5Fname=Version+2004+Products+Introductory+Special&category%5Fname=xmlspy+2004&Page=1

As it turns out, of course, some of the features we are specifically 
looking for (visual design of XSL:FO stylesheets for XML -> PDF 
transformation and support, support for header/footer/coverpage in xls:fo 
stylesheets, and web services support) are only available in the Enterprise 
edition.

The Enterprise edition runs around $1,000 (plus or minus with maintenance 
support) per user.  Volume purchases only offer a slight discount.  I 
briefly spoke to Theresa about seeing if perhaps I/S would try to work with 
the vendor to get MIT a price break.  We have over 85 schools that have 
licensed Coeus and I would suspect that we might leverage that in our 
discussions.

But, I was wondering... have any of you already purchased a copy(ies) of 
this software?   Are you needing a tool like this for you development 
efforts?   Did you purchase extra copies that OSP might leverage upon?   Do 
you know of alternative products that seem to be as feature rich?