Breakout Session: Using Advanced Tools Features with XML and XSLT

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My next session was also a full demo session that displayed the upcoming tools in VS.Net 2005 for XML and XSLT development. Again, the material covered was quite useful, but the speaker just was not that engaging. I forced myself to stay to the end of the session to at least see the XSLT debugging capabilities. It was like watching the full nightly news just to hear how you can save “money at the pumps”; meaning it was painful, but informative.

 

The XML Editor in Whidbey, film at 11.

 

The actual title was Tips & Tricks: Using Advanced Tools Features with XML and XSLT.

 

First off, you have to understand that XML is being treated more as a language in this release. The XML editor has been updated greatly and has a lot of good features now. It was written completely in Managed code itself.

 

I’ll just give you some bullet points:

  • XSLT can be compiled to IL to get a better performing transformation.

  • Using schemas for intellisense is easier and much improved from VS.Net 2003.

  • The designer also supports DTDs, but translates those DTDs to schemas under the hood to do so. Which also means they have the ability to translate existing DTDs into schemas, which they provide as a feature as well.

  • Navigating the XML is more like navigating code. For example, they have expanding and collapsing sections that work like the regions in VB.Net and C#, but are based on elements like they are when viewing XML in IE. You can even click on an element and click on Go To Definition which will take you to the definition of that element in the schema (provided there is one).

  • They have a host of schemas now that provide intellisense in your documents. You can also provide your own. Not only does this add intellisense, but also autocomplete, which is nice. They have included a schema for web.config as well so no more having to dig into the MSDN Library to remember the tags that aren’t added as part of the template.

  • Any file that starts with an XML declaration tag that isn’t registered for another tool will be loaded into the XML Editor, regardless of the extension. So .config files are automatically pulled up in the XML editor.

  • Oh, you can apply a schema by adding it to the document explicitly, like you would normally do, or by implicitly applying it by adding it in a document property. Either way the editor will enforce the schema on the XML document and provide warnings about violations. It will show errors of anything that violates XML rules, such as a incorrectly nested tag.

  • You can add XML code to the snippet library, and all snippets are stored as XML under the hood.

  • They have a XSLT debugging scheme similar to XMLSpy in which you can step through a transformation and see the output. It has a tri-view of xml data, xslt document and output.

  • And last, but not least, the XSLT schema is provided by default instead of having to get your own copy to drop in. All the XSLT elements are colored differently to stand out in XSLT documents.

     

All in all, I’ll get a lot of use out the new editor.