Altova has announced a limited beta testing phase for the XML Spy 4.0 product line, including the XML Spy 4.0 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and the XML Spy 4.0 Document Framework, released to customers and invited industry experts. The XML Spy 4.0 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) "builds on the success of the award-winning XML Spy 3.5 product in the developer market and adds expanded ODBC database access functionality, enhanced user interface customization, as well as support for the final XML Schema Recommendation for both graphical XML Schema editing and validation of XML instance documents based upon XML Schema. The XML Spy 4.0 Document Framework is based on a combination of XML Schema and XSLT Stylesheets. This provides the customer with a highly user-friendly interface -- very much like a typical word processor -- that allows for true XML content editing and creation. The framework consists of two applications: (1) The XML Spy 4.0 Document Editor supports free-flow WYSIWYG text editing, form-based data input, graphical elements, presentation and editing of arbitrary repeating XML elements as tables, real-time validation, and consistency checking using XML Schema and is deployed on the end-users desk. (2) The XML Spy 4.0 Document Administrator application includes a graphical XSLT Generator that enables the customization of the document editor by defining an XSLT Stylesheet and additional editing-specific options based upon the underlying DTD or XML Schema for use during the content creation or editing process."

From the announcement:

For the current 4.0 Beta 1 release, we are starting with the 4.0 IDE, which is available at this time. The Document Framework and XSLT Generator products will become available at a later date. This 4.0b1 version of the IDE includes the following new features:

• support for the final XML Schema Recommendation released by the W3C on 2001-05-02
• the ability to automatically convert schemas from the April 7 WD or Oct 24 CR to the final Rec version
• the ability to convert existing DTDs, XML-Data, or BizTalk schemas to the W3C XML Schema Definition Language
• automatic generation of an XML Schema from any ADO or ODBC accessible SQL database (including datatypes & relations)
• expanded database connectivity (ADO or ODBC) for import/export functions
• hierarchical database to XML import based on ADO SHAPE
• new user-interface look&feel (Office XP compatible)
• advanced user-interface customization (menus, keyboard-shortcuts, etc.)
• lots of bug-fixes