using Ruby with windows

I've downloaded Instant Rails (Ruby on Rails), which is a development environment for Ruby in a windows setting. So far it has worked really well. Nice not to have to fuss with dual boot issues. And it comes with PHP and MySql in a nice all-in-one package.

Found this little gotcha in that if you are in windows, chances are good something already has port 80 taken. Edit your config to use another port. I have IIS already, so I had to change ports. Here is a blog post on this topic.

you asked, I delivered: Schema Lightener updated

Recently posted about the Schema Lightener tool. Some of you responded with a request to better support Xml Namespace prefixes. Now, you can use prefixes in either the Xml instance or the schema. This new version still uses xslt 1.0 technology. Send me an email and I'll send you a copy. As I've said its completely free.

Also, I've added in a command line XSLT processor, a batch file, and a couple sample schemas to help you get started.

Am also working on a version with xslt2.0 that will manage all your includes and imports with one invocation.

Schema Lightener, a free tool to simplify xml schemas

I just released the free Xml Schema Lightener in order to address the issue described as "LiteBODs", subset Schemas, or constrained Schemas. In short it is a method to take a Schema and create a "Lite" one with all the undesired elements, attributes, and data types removed. Same data model but with fewer components.

I've gotten this request from clients in the data integration space, who either need to communicate a subset to their others (internal or external); or from clients who are trying to generate code from the Schema and don't want lots of unnecessary classes created for elements they don't implement.

Also got this request from Consortium members (i.e. members of HR-XML and OAG), where they want to take a base open standard Schema and constrain it down to an "as implemented" one that can be used for validation. It's been tested with OAGIS version 9.1 and HR-XML version 2.5.

There is an FAQ and real world statistics on the amoung of reduction in the number of components. Have a look and let me know your thoughts.