XMLSpy
By Altova
XMLSpy is a commercial XML editor and integrated development environment from Altova used for editing, validating, transforming, and debugging XML, XSD, XSLT, JSON, and related data-interchange formats.
Definition
XMLSpy is a commercial XML editor and integrated development environment from Altova used for editing, validating, transforming, and debugging XML, XSD, XSLT, JSON, and related data-interchange formats.
Overview
XMLSpy is a long-standing professional tool for developers and data architects who work with XML-based standards, and it remains one of the most recognized dedicated XML editors in the industry. It provides grid, text, and schema-design views for XML documents, validates content against XSD, DTD, and RELAX NG schemas, and includes a graphical XSLT and XQuery editor with a step-through debugger and breakpoints. It also supports SOAP web service testing and can generate source code bindings from XML schemas into languages such as Java or C#. XMLSpy is used heavily in enterprise, government, and regulated industries — finance, healthcare, and publishing among them — where strict XML schemas remain the standard for data interchange, even as JSON and REST APIs, more commonly tested with tools like Postman or Insomnia, have become the default for typical web development. XMLSpy also edits JSON and describes services documented with OpenAPI, bridging older XML-centric workflows with newer API conventions.
Key Features
- Grid, text, and schema views for editing XML documents
- Validation against XSD, DTD, and RELAX NG schemas
- Graphical XSLT and XQuery editors with step-through debuggers
- Code generation from XML schemas into Java, C#, and other languages
- Built-in support for SOAP web service testing
- JSON and JSON Schema editing alongside XML tooling