Alternative to Altova's MissionKit

Question

Anyone know of any good alternatives (other than those listed below which really are only good at specific XML development tasks)?

The Why (if you're interested):
I've been doing XML development on and off for years now, but someone brought XMLSpy to my attention recently, and it is awesome - the price isn't.

Lately I've been using a combination of:
Notepad++ (modifying XML)
EditX (validating/debugging XML)
Eclipse (designing schemas) and
MS Visual Studio (validating schemas)

...based on which makes the task(s) easiest.

But, I've just found out that we will be using XSL transformations to generate XML in the future. I've never used mission kit before, but I'm just short of positive XMLSpy replaces all the above mentioned tool for XML development. And if their XSL tools are anywhere near the caliber of XMLSpy ...simply put I need it.

I don't believe that I can convince the budgeting types to buy licenses for MissionKit at $1000 each (won't stop me from trying).

In the mean while some research on alternatives won't hurt, but a few Google queries has only revealed that not many people pay for Altova's (overpriced?) software as there are mostly links to P2P sites for downloading a more free-like version of MissionKit.

Answer 1

I was in the same situation as you are - designing service interfaces and doing a lot of XML stuff, but not getting the budget for buying Altova's XMLSpy stuff.

We settled for Liquid Technologies' Xml Studio - it has a free community edition to get you started and give you a feel of how it works, and it's quite extensive in supporting XML, XSLT, XML Schema (XSD) and quite a few more.

It's not quite as extensive as XmlSpy - but it does 90% of my job much easier than before. It's a stand-alone app and also plugs into Visual Studio.

Answer 2

All of the tasks that you mention are actually supported in XMLSpy Professional Edition, which is available for $499 (after the free trial. The XMLSpy edition comparison can be viewed here http://www.altova.com/xmlspy/edition-comparison.html