July 24, 2010

Free XML/XSD/XSLT Tools (Updated)

I have tried and used a number of free XML/XSD/XSLT editors and just want to share my experience. If you have a different view or a better free tool to suggest, please let us know.
  1. Recommended comprehensive
    • XMLPad: a pretty powerful XML/XSD/XSLT editor; providing multiple views for XML content. But sometimes there is ad.
    • XMLFox: a nice tool to view and edit XML schemas (and XML content) with multiple views; requires .Net 2.0.
  2. Recommended unique
    • XPath Visualizer: great tool to test XPath expressions.
    • Treebeard: a open source XML/XSLT editor, based on Java. easy for transformation (side by side view); but lack of visual mode and advanced features.
    • XML Marker: XML editor, very unique in visualizing XML data using tables, which is very helpful for editing structured relational data.
  3. Others
    • Notepad++: a general editor for many languages including XML.
    • EditiX Lite: very nice visual (diagram style) editor; it's good to get XPath
      information for any nodes; based on Java. limitation on the free edition (cannot generate schema).
    • XML Notepad 2007: a basic XML editing tool downloadable from Microsoft; requires .Net 2.0.
Online XSLT transformation tools
  1. http://www.shell-tools.net/index.php?op=xslt
  2. http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/tryxslt.asp?xmlfile=cdcatalog&xsltfile=cdcatalog
For other tools recommended, see http://jackzheng.net/cubicleh/software/?part=software_b.htm

July 13, 2010

Who uses ASP.Net?

I am preparing an advanced web development course based on ASP.Net. The first question coming to mind (and probably students want to know) is:

Who uses ASP.Net?

I did a quick research and below is part of the list:
Large company site:
  1. http://dell.com/
  2. http://www.costco.com/
  3. http://www.nestle.com/
  4. http://www.jcpenney.com/
  5. http://lego.com/
  6. http://match.com/
  7. http://www.monster.com/
  8. http://www.morningstar.com/
  9. https://chaseonline.chase.com/
  10. http://www.membershiprewards.com/
  11. http://www.atlanta-airport.com/
  12. http://www.newegg.com/
Governments, institutions, and non-profits
  1. https://etax.dor.ga.gov/
  2. http://access.wa.gov/
  3. http://www.toastmasters.org/
Microsoft affiliate websites
  1. http://bing.com/
  2. http://asp.net/
  3. http://www.codeplex.com/
  4. http://www.xbox.com/
Web application frameworks and products built upon ASP.Net
  • SharePoint
  • DotNetNuke
  • ASP.Net MVC
  • mojoPortal
  • Other smaller ones like: BlogEngine.NET, DasBlog, Gallery Server Pro, nopCommerce
Well, ASP.Net is not just used for websites; it is an enterprise capable technology that is used by many large companies for intranet use and enterprise application development, together with other technologies.
BTW, you can use http://web-sniffer.net/ to see the HTTP header returned from websites. Some of them tell what technology they are based on.