All posts by : Oleg Tkachenko

51 of 182 | Free Microsoft Training CD-ROMs - AppDev is giving away these Microsoft training CDs. Free shipping in the US, nominal shipping charge outside. Quite impressive list: Visual C# 2005: Developing Applications Visual Basic 2005: Developing Applications ASP.NET Using Visual C# 2005 ASP.NET Using Visual Basic 2005 Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Microsoft Office Exploring ASP.NET "Atlas" and Web 2.0 Exploring Visual C# 2005 Exploring Visual Basic 2005 Exploring ASP.NET Using Visual C# 2005 Exploring ASP.NET Using Visual Basic 2005Visual Studio .NET Developing Applications Using Visual C# .NETVisual Basic .NET ASP.NET Using Visual C# .NET ASP.NET Using Visual Basic .NET Exploring BizTalk Server 2006 Exploring Microsoft SQ......

52 of 182 | Introducing AdSenseWatch Desk Band - This Lebanon war had a terrible impact on my personal productivity. Too much TV, too much internet, too much pain, too little work. Hope it ends soon. Anyway I decided I need some short victorious war, oops I mean small interesting project to get me back on track. I've seen AdSense Notifier plugin for Firefox another day and I thought - cool, but I don't run Firefox 100% time, I want it on Windows taskbar, not a browser statusbar. So I had a spike project and got it working in just one night. Then I spent another two weeks polishing it. Ahhhhh, a joy of good old pure win32, MFC-free, just Windows and you and nothing in between. Unmanaged C++, LPTSTR, HWND, messages, win32 multith......

53 of 182 | Streaming XML filtering in Java and .NET - XML processing is changing. In Java SAX slowly but steadily goes away or at least goes into low level and nowadays Java with StAX is not so different from .NET XmlReader. I found it pretty interesting to compare approaches to streaming filtering XML in Java and .NET. Filtering is a very useful technique for transforming XML on the fly, while XML is being read. Filtering out parts or branches application isn't interested to process is a great way to simplify XML reading code, which is especially important in streaming XML processing which usually tends to be more complicated than in-memory based (XML DOM) processing. Let's say we have this dummy XML and we want to extract "interes......

54 of 182 | Service Modeling Language based on XML Schema and Schematron - Microsoft, BEA, IBM, Cisco, Intel , HP etc mix XML Schema, Schematron and XPointer to create a draft of the Service Modeling Language (SML) used to model complex IT services and systems, including their structure, constraints, policies, and best practices. A model in SML is realized as a set of interrelated XML documents. The XML documents contain information about the parts of an IT service, as well as the constraints that each part must satisfy for the IT service to function properly. Constraints are captured in two ways: 1. Schemas - these are constraints on the structure and content of the documents in a model. SML uses a profile of XML Schema 1.0 [2,3] as the schema lan......

55 of 182 | Anton Lapounov is blogging - Anton Lapounov is blogging! He's one of the brilliant guys responsible for XSLT in the Microsoft XML Team. If you are subscribed to my blog, you want to subscibe to "Anton Lapounov: XML XSLT and Beyond" blog too. ...

56 of 182 | MSXML 6.0 SDK finally released - Microsoft finally released MSXML6 (aka Microsoft Core XML Services) SDK. I've been told it was expected back in December. Anyway, it's ready. Now it would be nice if Microsoft updated MSXSL utility to support MSXML6 (I know it was also ready back in December too). ...

57 of 182 | How to validate XSLT output in .NET 2.0 - How would you validate XSLT output on the fly without caching transformation result as a whole? That's easy - just use MvpXslTransform class that adds to the XslCompiledTransform class ability to transform into XmlReader and wrap that reader witth a validating reader. As a result - streaming validation, no memory hogging and ability to abort transformation at first validation error. Simple sample below. XPathDocument doc = new XPathDocument("source.xml"); MvpXslTransform xslt = new MvpXslTransform(); xslt.Load("XSLTFile1.xslt"); XmlReader resultReader = xslt.Transform(new XmlInput(doc), null); XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings(); settings.Valid......

58 of 182 | foActive <X>Styler - And going on with Word as XSL-FO editor theme - take a look at a brand new tool called foActive <X>Styler: foActive <X>Styler is a plug-in for Microsoft Word 2003 Professional which allows a user to design and test dynamic document templates right from within the Word authoring environment. <X>Styler is used to create XSL templates for server-based transformation for high-volume dynamic document print applications such as direct mail, correspondence, invoicing, statements, contracts, and legal forms. And more: Writing XSL templates that generate XSL FO output can be a difficult task, one suited for an engineer and not a marketing person. What the industry neede......

59 of 182 | Rotor 2.0 - This is old news, but I somehow missed it so I'll post for news-challenged like me. Microsoft has released "Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure 2.0" aka Rotor 2.0 - buildable source codes of the ECMA CLI and the ECMA C#. This is roughly .NET 2.0 sources with original comments. Priceless! It's released under "MICROSOFT SHARED SOURCE CLI, C#, AND JSCRIPT LICENSE". New in this release: Full support for Generics. New C# 2.0 features like Anonymous Methods, Anonymous Delegates and Generics BCL additions. Lightweight Code Generation (LCG). Stub-based dispatch. (What the hell is that?) Numerous bug fixes. There is always the Reflector, but Rotor is different - you......

60 of 182 | XSLfast 3.0 released - XSL-FO WYSIWYG editor - jCatalog Software AG has releaed XSLfast 3.0 - XSL-FO WYSIWYG editor. What's new in version 3.0. In general XSL-FO doesn't meant to be authored, the idea is that XSL-FO is generated using XSLT. Unfortunately that requires knowledge of XSL-FO twisted vocabulary and, well, XSLT. I always knew WYSIWYG editor could save XSL-FO and XSLfast might be that one. If only the price wasn't freaking 890,00 EUR per license. And that probably doesn't include XSL-FO formatter itself! Btw, after years and years Apache FOP Team's finally discussing 1.0 release... ...

61 of 182 | Bruce Eckel's general purpose XML manipulation library - Bruce Eckel doesn't like XML. But alas - it's everywhere and he has to deal with it. So as you can expect, he goes and creates "general purpose XML manipulation library called xmlnode." for Python. That should be easy, right? Just one class, no need for more. Alas, it doesn't support namespaces, mixed content, CDATA sections, comments, processing instructions, DTD, Doctype, doesn't check well-formedness rules such as element and attribute names or allowed in XML characters etc. Well, that must be version 0.0... ...

62 of 182 | XSLT2/XPath2/XQuery1 fresh CRs - W3C has released fresh versions of the Candidate Recommendations of XML Query 1.0, XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0 and supporting documents. No big deal changes - xdt:* types has been moved to xs:* namespace (damn XML Schema). See new XQuery1/XPath2 type system below. Looks like XSLT2/XPath2/XQuery1 are moving fast toward Proposed Recommendation. What's weird is that new documents all say "This specification will remain a Candidate Recommendation until at least 28 February 2006." Must be a mistake. Anyway, what are now chances for XSLT 2.0 in the .NET? Next major .NET release (Orcas) is expected October 2007 or so (forget newly announced .NET 3.0, which is actually .NET 2.0 + Avalon + Indigo......

63 of 182 | New Microsoft XML API - XmlLite - And you thought XML is done? No way. It's alive and kicking technology. And here is just one more proof: yet another new XML API from Microsoft - the XmlLite. It's a native library for building high-performance secure XML-based applications. XmlLite library is a small one by design - it only includes pull XML parser (native analog of the .NET's XmlReader), XML writer (native analog of the .NET's XmlWriter) and XML resolver (similar to the .NET's XmlResolver). XmlLite's meant to be small, simple, secure, standards-compliant but damn fast library to read and write XML. It's claimed to be able to parse XML even faster than MSXML. What I found especially compelling is XmlLite API si......

64 of 182 | On creating custom XmlReaders/XmlWriters in .NET 2.0, Part 2 - This is second part of the post. Find first part here. So what is a better way of creating custom XmlReader/XmlWriter in .NET 2.0? Here is the idea - have an utility wrapper class, which wraps XmlReader/XmlWriter and does nothing else. Then derive from this class and override methods you are interested in. These utility wrappers are called XmlWrapingReader and XmlWrapingWriter. They are part of System.Xml namespace, but unfortunately they are internal ones - Microsoft XML team has considered making them public, but in the Whidbey release rush decided to postpone this issue. Ok, happily these classes being pure wrappers have no logic whatsoever so anybody who needs them can indeed......

65 of 182 | On creating custom XmlReaders/XmlWriters in .NET 2.0 - When developing custom XmlReader or XmlWriter in .NET 2.0 there is at least three options: implement XmlReader/XmlWriter extend one of concrete XmlReader/XmlWriter implementations and override only methods you need implement XmlReader/XmlWriter by wrapping one of concrete XmlReader/XmlWriter implementations and overriding only methods you need First way is a for full-blown XmlReader/XmlWriters, which need to implement each aspects of XML reading/writing in a different way, e.g. XmlCsvReader, which reads CSV as XML or XslReader, which streamlines XSLT output. This is the most clean while the hardest way - XmlReader has 26 (and XmlWriter - 24) abstract members you ......

66 of 182 | On XmlReader/XmlWriter design changes in .NET 2.0 - From .NET 1.X experience Microsoft seems finally figured out that providing a set of concrete poorly composable XmlReader and XmlWriter implementations (XmlTextReader, XmlTextWriter, XmlValidatingReader, XmlNodeReader) and emphasizing on programming with concrete classes instead of anstract XmlReader/Xmlwriter was really bad idea. One notorious horrible sample was XmlValidatingReader accepting abstract XmlReader instance and downcasting it silently to XmlTextReader inside. In .NET 2.0 Microsoft (with a huge diffidence) is trying to bring some order to that mess: XmlReader and XmlWriter now follow factory method design pattern by providing static Create() method which is now re......

67 of 182 | Draft 1.3 of the Ecma Office Open XML formats standard - Via Brian Jones we learn that the Ecma International Technical Committee (TC45) has published draft version 1.3 of the Ecma Office Open XML File Formats Standard. This is 4000 pages document specifying new (alternative to Oasis OpenOffice/OpenDocument XML format) Office XML format to be used by Microsoft starting with Office 2007. As a matter of interest: The draft is available in PDF, which was created by Word 2007 The draft also available in Open XML format itself, which one will be use once Office 2007 Beta 2 is out The document is huge and specifies everything down to the "Maple Muffins" border style kinda details These guys help MIcrosoft in creating Ecma Office Open......

68 of 182 | Saxon.NET and System.Xml.Xsl - I really enjoy seeing Michael Kay talking about working with XML in .NET. That makes me feel I might be not a freak after all. Mike writes about benchmarking Saxon.NET vs System.Xml.Xsl.XslTransform v1.1. .NET seems to be thrice faster, but then Saxon.NET converts .NET DOM into a Saxon tree before each transformation. So Mike went to implement a lightweight wrapper around .NET DOM to allow Saxon to transform .NET DOM almost directly and while working on that he found Microsoft XML documentation "woefully inadequate". Whoha! I know the feeling! Microsoft documentation is written for end users, not for vendors. Just step out a bit from the mainstream (say try to implement c......

69 of 182 | Martin Szugat's article about eXml Web server control - Martin Szugat, .NET and XML expert from Germany has published an article about using my eXml Web server control in ASP.NET 2.0. The article was published in the German dot.net magazin and now it also went online in the German MSDN: "Von der Quelle zum Kunden. Anzeige von XML-Daten auf dem Client in ASP.NET 2.0". Yep, German only, no English translation yet afaik. Well, cool anyway. ...

70 of 182 | How to check if XslCompiledTransform instance has already loaded a stylesheet - XslCompiledTransform provides amazing transformation performance, but obviously not without a price. As with any compiling system the price is slower and quite resource consuming compilation stage. That's why it's very important to cache loaded XslCompiledTransform instance to avoid paying compilation price over again. One question that comes sometimes while implementing caching/pooling systems for XslCompiledTransform is how to check if XslCompiledTransform instance has been already loaded with a stylesheet? XslCompiledTransform design separates object construction and initialization for the sake of reusability (to be able to load another XSLT stylesheet into the same XslCompile......

71 of 182 | XSLT 2.0 in .NET Survey Winner - Well, "XSLT 2.0 in .NET" survey at the XML Lab site has ended back in January and I forgot to select a winner. Ooops. Let's finish this now. I obviously made a mistake requiring user registration for voting, but then I needed some way to identify a winner... Anyway, 40 people registered and voted (thanks guys), which is not bad for such a small unknown site. 72% need XSLT 2.0, 25% think it would be nice to have, 2% happy with XSLT 1.0. Quite predictable given my audience. And the winner (choosen truly randomly using EXSLT random:random-sequence() function) is Yoeri Van de Moortel from Belgium. Congratulations, Yoeri! Get in touch with me, I need your address to send the "XSLT ......

72 of 182 | eXml updated - Ok, I'm back. I have updated eXml Web Server Control, which uses XslCompiledTransform, supports 70+ EXSLT functions, XInclude, friendly XML rendering, <?xml-stylesheet?>, embedded stylesheets etc.Martin Szugat found some bugs and kindly provided patches, thanks Martin! Additionally I implemented one small but useful feature users kept asking for - cache dependencies for imported/included stylesheets. That's when you have included or imported stylesheet and modify it - now eXml control notices it and recompiles XSLT on the next request. Go get eXml Web server control v1.1. Now I think about eXmlDataSource control... Free asp:XmlDataSource analog running XslCompiledTransform, ......

73 of 182 | XSLT 2.0 and .NET unofficial survey ends January 31 - "XSLT 2.0 in .NET" survey at the XML Lab site ends in a week.Vote now and get a chance to win the "XSLT 2.0" book by Mike Kay!When the survey ends one lucky survey taker from whatever part of the world choosen randomly will get the book. Note: you have to be registered on the Xml Lab site to vote. Sorry, but I need some simple way to identify the winner. Registration is simple and public - no email verification or something like, just fill in your name, password and email and then vote. ...

74 of 182 | exsl:object-type() XSLT extension function in .NET 2.0 - Now that XslCompiledTransform in .NET 2.0 supports exsl:object-type() extension function I think a little intro is needed as this is really new function for Microsoft-oriented XSLT developers. exsl:object-type() function brings a bit of reflection functionality into XSLT allowing dynamic type identification at runtime. That is using exsl:object-type() one can determine type of an object, e.g. a type of passed parameter value. In XSLT 1.0 type system that means 'string', 'number', 'boolean', 'node-set', 'RTF' or 'external': Node type: String type: Boolean type: Number type:......

75 of 182 | XQuery Style Conventions - Creators of the XQDoc, a free tool for documenting XQuery modules have released XQuery Style Conventions. They claim the document to be to be based on experience and feedback from the XQuery development community. It does seem ok to me. In a perfect world every programmer would follow style conventions of course. But we live in another kind of world... ...

76 of 182 | How to give away 3 Visual Studio Team Suite/MSDN Premium Subscriptions: looking for ideas - As many other Microsoft MVPs I've been given 3 "Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite with MSDN Premium Subscriptions" redemption cards to share. So now I'm having hard time looking for smart ideas how to do so. One card I would give to Kevin Downs, the guy who runs NDoc if he still has no MSDN subscription, but for the rest two I probably would go the way my fellow MVPs went and arrange some sort of contest. XML contest, of course, hmmm. Ummm, any ideas, anyone? ...

77 of 182 | "Schema-Aware Queries and Stylesheets" article from Michael Kay - In the latest article "Schema-Aware Queries and Stylesheets" Michael Kay explaines how useful XML Schema-awareness is for XQuery queries and XSLT stylesheets. ...

78 of 182 | Beginning 2006 - Happy New Year everyone, I hope you are not sick and depressive as I am. But I'm slowly recovering... Good news in the mailbox yesterday - I got Microsoft MVP Award again, third year in a row, 2004, 2005 and now 2006. In the "Windows Server System - XML" category. Well, thanks! That's cool to be Microsoft MVP btw. You own nothing to Microsoft (well, except NDA) and get private access to internal information and people as well as nice benefits. And all it takes - helping people, which is nice on its own. ...

79 of 182 | First XML Podcast - Ok, this is gonna be the firrst podcast I want to subscribe to. It's "A Weekly XML Industry Podcast Hosted by Kurt Cagle and M. David Peterson". First real pilot segment can be found here. It's about OASIS Open Document and Microsoft's Open XML formats. The podcast feed is here. Subscribed. ...

80 of 182 | Quiz of XSLT 1.0 oddities by James Fuller - You say you know XSLT well? Try answer this quiz of XSLT 1.0 oddities by James Fuller. Subject: [xsl] a bit of distraction ' quiz of XSLT 1.0 oddities' From: James Fuller Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 11:04:03 +0100 a bit of distraction for those who must work. I am generating a little 'quiz of oddities' for XSLT 1.0, some of which I have bumped into from time to time....none are particularly mind blowing, though some may make one stop and think. Here are some of mine....(xsl:stylesheet elements have been stripped), any more good questions out there ? Answers sometime around new years. -------------------------------------------------------------- Whats th......

81 of 182 | The Raise of XSLT Compilation - Slowly, gradually and with not much loud buzz both modern managed platforms - Java and .NET have switched to compiling XSLT implementations by default. First Java 5.0 made compiling Apache XSLTC processor a default transformer in JAXP 1.3 (instead of interpreting Apache XALAN). Then Microsoft released .NET 2.0 with new XSLT implementation - XslCompiledTransform replacing now obsolete XslTransform (guess what - interpreting one). XSLTC compiles XSLT into Java bytecode just like Java compiler, while XslCompiledTransform compiles XSLT into Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) just like C# or VB compiler. The similarity is striking. Does it mean the era of interpreting XSLT processo......

82 of 182 | XInclude and Mvp.Xml Library in Microsft products - By the way, this is sort of a milestone for the Mvp.Xml project - Microsoft has released Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) and Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) for Visual Studio 2005 which uses and includes recently released Mvp.Xml library v2.0, particularly our XInclude implementation. This is the first Microsoft product using XInclude via Mvp.Xml library. Hope not the last one, way to go guys. I truly hope to see one day Microsoft Biztalk release including our EXSLT implementation. As a matter of interest - Mvp.Xml project is an open-source project hosted at SourceForge, led by Microsoft MVPs and supplementing XML processing functionality in .NET. We currently provid......

83 of 182 | Microsoft and EXSLT - secret breakthrough - There are two new killer but undocumented features in Microsoft .NET 2.0 pertaining to EXSLT. Anybody like me regularly digging in System.Xml assembly probably knows it, but general audience is still unaware. So I want to share these secrets. Secret #1. Unexpected surprise. Microsoft`s new XSLT processor (XslCompiledTransform) supports natively two EXSLT extension functions - exsl:node-set() and exsl:object-type(). That is technically speaking XslCompiledTransform supports EXSLT - Common module. Moreover, as mentioned in the "Introducing XslCompiledTransform" article on the Microsoft XML Team`s WebLog, the behaviour of Microsoft specific msxsl:node-set() extension function......

84 of 182 | WordML2HTML with support for images stylesheet updated - Almost 2 years ago I published a post "Transforming WordML to HTML: Support for Images" showing how to hack Microsoft WordML2HTML stylesheet to support images. People kept telling me it doesn`t support some weird image formats or header images. Moreover I realized it has a bug and didn`t work with .NET 2.0. So finally I updated that damn stylesheet. Now I took another Microsoft WordML2HTML stylesheet as a base - that one that comes with Word 2003 XML Viewer tool. I think it`s a better one. Anyway, I added to it a couple of templates so images now get decoded and saved externally and headers and footers are processed too (only header/footer for odd pages per section to be precise). ......

85 of 182 | MSXML6 SDK documentation online - MSXML6 SDK documentation is online now. In fact it`s "multi-version" documentation, which covers MSXML3 through MSXML6. So, what`s new in MSXML6 Looks like it`s security tightening, XML Schema support improvements and removals: What`s New in MSXML 6.0 MSXML 6.0 shipped with SQL Server 2005. It also shipped as a Web release. The following is a high-level summary of features that were introduced with MSXML 6.0. Security A number of enhancements have been made to MSXML 6.0 to eliminate security threats. Additionally, some features that are insecure, such as DTDs and inline schemas, have been turned off by default. For more information, see MSXML Security Overview. XDR Schema Suppor......

86 of 182 | On making noise about XSLT 2.0 and Microsoft - Dare thinks I`m making fruitless noise asking people if they need XSLT 2.0: I`m not sure how an informal survey in a blog would convince Microsoft one way or the other about implementing a technology. A business case to convince a product team to do something usually involves showing them that they will lose or gain significant marketshare or revenue by making a technology choice. A handful of XML geeks who want to see the latest and greatest XML specs implemented by Microsoft does not a business case make. Well Dare you underestimate the power of geeks and blogs :) Of course I`m not making a busines case. I`m looking for real world XSLT2 business cases (and not without results bt......

87 of 182 | Processing XML in .NET: Antipatterns - I run into this article "Harnessing the BackPack API" by Michael K. Campbell in the new and very cool "XML 4 Fun" column at MSDN. The article is otherwise brilliant and really fun, but XML processing code samples are not so good. It`s actually a great collection of XML processing antipatterns. Let`s see. Here is a code snippet: private void SinglePageReturned(string pageData) { // TODO: add try/catch etc byte[] data = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(pageData); MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(data); XPathDocument input = new XPathDocument(stream); XslCompiledTransform xsl = new XslCompiledTransform(); XmlNode stylesheet = this.LoadTransformDocument()......

88 of 182 | XSLT 2.0 and Microsoft Unofficial Survey - Moving along business cases Microsoft seeks to implement XSLT 2.0 I`m trying to gather some opinion statistics amongs developers working with XML and XSLT. So I`m holding this survey at the XML Lab site: Would you like to have XSLT 2.0 implementation in the .NET Framework The possible answers are: Yes, I need XSLT 2.0 Yes, that would be nice to have No, continue improving XSLT 1.0 impl instead No, XSLT 1.0 is enough for me Vote now and get a chance to win the "XSLT 2.0" book by Mike Kay!When the survey ends (probably in a month or so) one lucky survey taker from whatever part of the world choosen randomly will get the book. Note: you have to be registered on the Xml Lab site to v......

89 of 182 | eXml - extended ASP.NET XML Web server control v1.0 released - I`m glad to announce first release of the eXml - extended ASP.NET Xml Web Server Control. eXml is a free open-source ASP.NET 2.0 Web server control extending and improving standard ASP.NET XML Web server control. eXml Web server control uses new .NET 2.0 XSLT processor - XslCompiledTransform class to perform XSL transformations thus providing in average 400% performance boost and improved standard compliance. Additionally eXml Web server control provides built-in support for 70+ EXSLT extension functions, XML Inclusions (XInclude) 1.0, friendly XML rendering, XML processng instruction, embedded stylesheets and conditional whitespace stripping. eXml Download | eXml Documentaion ......

90 of 182 | Another XQuery tutorial by Mike Kay: "Blooming FLWOR - An Introduction to the XQuery FLWOR Expression" - Mike Kay keeps teaching us XQuery. New installment of his XQuery tutorials series sponsored by the Stylus Studio, is called "Blooming FLWOR - An Introduction to the XQuery FLWOR Expression" and covers XQuery FLWOR expressions, "the workhorse of the XQuery language". ...

91 of 182 | Breaking changes in MSXML6 - Just released Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0 introduces some security-related breaking changes in XML and XSLT processing, but MSXML6 SDK documentation isn`t released yet (expected next week) and can be found nowhere on the net, so you might have a hard time wondering why basic things stop working after upgrading to MSXML6. Here is a bit of information that might be helpful. MSXML6 is aligned with .NET 2.0 with regard to "secure by default" principle. That means that both MSXML6 and .NET 2.0 by default prohibit DTD (even internal subset) in XML documents, document() function and embedded scripts (ms:script) in XSLT stylesheets. Here is how you can enable processin......

92 of 182 | XSLT 2.0, XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Are W3C Candidate Recommendations - That`s a big milestone in a 6-years-going-so-far design-by-committee experiment: XSLT 2.0, XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 are finally W3C Candidate Recommendations. That means that W3C now officially calls for implementations (which shows another weirdness of the design-by-committee process as XQuery alone has about 40 implementations already as per Ken North). CR phase will last at least till 28 February 2006, that means late 2006 is probably the timeframe for the XSLT 2.0, XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Recommendations. ...

93 of 182 | W3C starts "the XML pipeline language" project - Norman Walsh: In any event, after much procedural wrangling, the W3C has finally chartered a new Working Group in the XML Activity to address the problem of a standard XML pipeline language, the XML Processing Model Working Group. And they persuaded me to chair it, for better or worse. :-) The charter lays out the scope, goals, and deliverables pretty well, so I won`t bother recapitulating them here. That should be useful standard. ...

94 of 182 | "Share customer`s pain" video - I`ve seen this video at the MVP Summit. Fun, but you know, sometimes I wish something like that was actually deployed. Hey, wait, I`m a developer too... Well, all actions have consequences after all. Oh, and don`t forget "Bill Gates goes to college" too. What I can`t find on the net is a cool picture of Erik Meijer unveiling XML literals in VB9 to the world. That`s probably still NDA photo. ...

95 of 182 | ASP.NET 2.0`s asp:xml control uses obsolete .NET XSLT processor - I`m disappointed in ASP.NET once again. I was building some ASP.NET 2.0 application with XSLT processing involved, run into XSLT bugs and oh horror realized the ASP.NET 2.0`s asp:xml server control still uses old slow as hell buggy obsoleted deprecated XslTransform class! That more than sucks. That`s no use. I just stop using asp:xml control and won`t recommend to anybody using it. I just can`t understand how come one Microsoft group spends years to build a better tool and then another Microsoft group, which uses the tool, just ignores it and keeps using old obsolete one. Something is wrong here. Actually ASP.NET`s asp:xml server control has a long story of suckiness on XS......

96 of 182 | IBM Acquired DataPower while Intel Acquired Sarvega - Interesting - during last month both leading XML hardware makers - DataPower and Sarvega were acquired - former by IBM and latter by Intel. Both sites have almost similar "We are acquired!" announcements. ...

97 of 182 | How to insert a code snippet using a shortcut in XML editor of Visual Studio 2005 - If you have tried to create or use code snippets in any of XML languages in Visual Studio 2005 you probably stumbled across the issue of using shortcuts. In C# or VB you just type code snippet`s shortcut name and press Tab, it just works. In XML it doesn`t :(. I`ve spent couple of hours reflecting into XML editor to see why it doesn`t work (that was an interesting waste of time anyway) and when I just found out how it works I also found out (via Aaron Skonnard) it`s documented at MSDN. RTFM, RTFM, RTFM. Unfortunately inserting code snippets by shortcut name in XML editor of Visual Studio 2005 isn`t as smooth as in C# or VB. Two more keystrokes: ...

98 of 182 | ValidationType.Auto is obsolete, what do I do - In .NET 2.0 ValidationType.Auto value is made obsolete. What`s worse - it doesn`t work for XmlReaders created via XmlReader.Create() factory method. But how do you validate against either DTD and/or schema, i.e. against DTD if document has a DOCTYPE and/or schema if any is applicable The answer is: you can chain two XmlReaders, one set up for performing DTD validation and second - schema validation. XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings(); settings.ValidationType = ValidationType.DTD; XmlReader inner = XmlReader.Create("book.xml", settings); // DTD Validation settings.Schemas.Add("urn:book-schema", "book.xsd"); settings.ValidationType = ValidationType.Schema......

99 of 182 | XML Catalogs v1.1 is an OASIS Standard - Norman Walsh: XML Catalogs V1.1 is an OASIS Standard. I`m also happy to report that my implementation of XML Catalog support, currently part of the xml-commons project at Apache, will ship as a standard part of the next Java™ release. You`ve got a standard. You`ve got an implementation. What are you waiting for I`ve been using catalogs for at least ten years, and XML Catalogs for at least five, so really, you can start deploying them today. Great news. I use XML catalogs for years and I love it. I even got a prototype implementation for .NET which works for some my stuff. But full-blown XML Catalogs implementation for .NET is still deep down my todo list, cause I don`t ......

100 of 182 | "Migrating to XslCompiledTransform" article - Microsoft XML Team has published an article "Migrating to XslCompiledTransform" by my pals Sergey Dubinets and Anton Lapunov. It explains how to migrate to the new XSLT 1.0 processor in .NET 2.0 - XslCompiledTransform class. XslCompiledTransform is a revolutionary XSLT processor - it`s gonna be the first truly compiled mainstream XSLT processor. It`s fast and conformant just as MSXML4. The article covers: how XslCompiledTransform works, differences in API, in behaviour, new functionality, faq, howto. The article is meant to be updated on a regular basis. Once a new migration issue is discovered the article will be updated with a solution. So bookmark it. And the article is not comp......