New Parsers Hit the Streeet in 2000!

Just after the first of the year, a number of new parsers made an appearance.  Some parsers are XML parsers.  And some support other new W3C standards.  If you are building your tool bench for the year 2000, consider adding some of the latest parsers.

VRP (Validating RDF Parser)

VRP was developed by Karsten Tolle, University of Hanover, Germany.  VRP is currently available for testing purposes in a alpha release. It has both a runtime and a source distribution. VRP is the first RDF parser offering full-fledged validation of RDF statements against an RDF Schema. It also supports validation of an RDF Schema which can defined in several namespaces. This parser includes both semantic and syntax checking of RDF schemata and metadata instances and can perform statement validation across several RDF/XML namespaces.  VRP was developed in Java 1.2.  It understands embedded RDF in HTML or XML. VRP has full Unicode support.  VRP is based on standard compiler generator tools for Java (CUP/JFlex) and is described as being "easy to use and integrate with other software."

XML Schema Regular Expression Parser

On January 4, 2000, Danial Potter from Mitre announced the availability of  a regular expression parser suitable for use in the W3C XML Schema specification. The parser is a Java applet (Java 1.1) and will require a Java enabled browser.  It is designed to parse and match strings based on the current XML Schema pattern definition.  This parser is now available at www.xfront.org. This software is still currently a test, meaning that there are still bugs which have yet to be fixed or even found. 

XMILO; A Nestable C++ Parser/Writer

On January 5, 2000, Paul Miller announced the availability of XMILO.  XMILO version 0.3 is "a streaming, XML parser for C++ application data, layered over [James Clark's] expat.  XMILO has chained element handlers and support for parsing lists. Unicode support is not currently available and much testing remains to be done.

Architag's Schema Validating Editor

Technically this product may be an editor, but it's ability to validate schema makes it relevant to this article.  This is the first product offering from Architag.  You can find a description of the alpha release of 'xRay, a New XML Editor' at http://architag.com/xray/.  xRay runs on Microsoft Windows operating systems and is a real-time, validating XML editor designed to provide fast creating, viewing and editing of XML documents. According to Brian Travis, President and CEO of Architag, "While there are several editing tools available for the XML implementer, we felt the need for a diagnostic tool that allows users and developers to look inside their XML documents the way the XML parser does. One of the breakthroughs in xRay is the ability to create and modify a document type definition (DTD) schema, but also create and validate against XML Data, a schema submission to the W3C. xRay is also the first XML editor that verifies rich datatypes, like numbers and dates, against the XML Data schema."  The xRay XML Editor is currently in a limited alpha testing release. Developers who are interested in participating in the test can contact Architag at xray-alpha@architag.com

Microsoft Parser Now Supports W3C XPath and XSLT

New XML parser technology (MSXML) is now available from Microsoft as a technology preview release.  In this release you will find initial support for XSLT and XPath to support the W3C's recent XSLT and XPath recommendations.  Microsoft continues to focus on server-side use of XML showing performance gains of 200-300% in some common scenarios. Other new features include capabilities to cache stylesheets; pass parameters to stylesheets;  pass objects to stylesheets; Set the mode at run-time; cache XPath and Schema; and validate against in-memory schema. This preview version of MSXML can be installed and run in parallel with existing systems.  This allows developers to build new applications that take advantage of the new XML services and features.  A number of tools are provided as well.  True to their promise, Microsoft is providing a migration path to keep developers up to the latest W3C recommendations.  One such tool is the XSL to XSLT Converter 1.0. The xsl-xslt-converter.xslt style sheet updates Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 XSL style sheets to XSLT-compliant style sheets.

See Microsoft XML Parser Technology Preview Release from the Microsoft MSDN. For more detailed information see "What's New in the MSXML Parser Technology Preview Release."