We’re excited to introduce our new XSLT Technology training as the latest Altova Online Training offering. As with all our trainings, XSLT Technology is released as a free, self-paced course, available online, so students can fit it into their busy schedules.
XSLT transforms XML data into other formats, and this course will transform a beginner XML student into an advanced user. Intermediate and advanced students will gain valuable techniques to add to their XML toolkits.
It’s an exciting week here at Altova! We have several new offerings to tell you about, including Release 2 of the Version 2012 Altova MissionKit and entire product line, a new Altova Online Training course on XSLT Technology, and a new service called Altova Product Consulting.
Let’s start with what’s included in the latest product release. Version 2012 Release 2 delivers a host of the new features that have been most frequently requested by our customers, including support for EPUB 2.x, sorting of data mapping results, RichEdit functionality for Authentic eForms, code generation from UML sequence diagrams, and much more.
For Version 2012, UModel introduces Model Driven Architecture (MDA), with platform-independent models and a Model Transformation feature that transforms all code relevant modeling elements to and from UML, C#, Visual Basic, Java, databases, and XML Schema.
Model Transformation
A Model Driven Architecture approach to software engineering with platform independent models provides two primary advantages:
Users can even apply model transformation to projects that were reverse engineered from existing source code. For instance, an existing Java application can be reverse-engineered by UModel then transformed to generate Visual Basic classes, and many other possibilities are available.
Data Exchange for the Mobile Workforce
Organizations have been forced to adapt many of their internal business processes to accommodate an increasingly mobile workforce. Although there are technological solutions that address many of today’s communication needs, the plethora of different document formats in use – even within the same organization – means that some tasks remain vexing. For example, how does an organization remain flexible enough to facilitate the exchange of data among mobile workers yet retain the ability to bring that data into internal IT systems?
Altova offers an inexpensive solution with StyleVision®, a graphical stylesheet and report designer with electronic forms capability, and Authentic®, a WYSIWYG XML and database editor in which end users can view and edit electronic forms created in StyleVision. The Authentic Community Edition is available from the Altova Web site as a free download so that anyone can be brought into your workflow, whether they are internal or external to your organization.
In this post we’ll present a sample case showing you how to create an electronic form that mirrors an existing paper form (in our example it is a reimbursement form) and then we’ll follow it as it makes its way around a fictional organization.
