XML development tools company Stylus Studio has announced the immediate availability of Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 XML Enterprise Edition, the latest version of its award-winning XML IDE. The new release provides powerful new XML tools and utilities to simplify XML data integration tasks faced by developers, the company says. Software professionals can download a free trial of Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 XML Enterprise Edition today.

"Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 exemplifies our continued focus on delivering the most innovative products for solving XML data integration challenges," said Carlo Innocenti, Program Manager of DataDirect Technologies XML Product Group. "The new XML development tools and utilities, as well as significant performance and extensibility enhancements to our XML deployment adapter technologies, provide a very compelling, standards-based solution for working with heterogeneous data sources."

The company reports the following highlights of Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 XML Enterprise Edition:

• Enhanced EDI Support: Stylus Studio's EDI-to-XML and XML-to-EDI tools now support hundreds of message and transaction set types of EDIFACT and X12 - across dozens of versions - allowing EDI to be used as easily as XML as input to XSLT and XQuery programs. And those same programs can write output through the adapter, generating EDI transparently and automatically. Stylus Studio supports the newest release of X12, 5030, keeping the tradition of providing comprehensive support of available versions of X12. Preliminary versions of EDIFACT are also supported. Stylus Studio can now automatically convert to and from EDIFACT versions from the prototype 88-1 to the present D05A version. The International Air Transport Association dialect of EDI, IATA PADIS, an EDI standard for air transportation, is also supported.

• Convert IATA to XML Schema: A new Document Wizard allows you to convert an IATA documents to XML Schema, simplifying the verification of IATA files converted to XML.

• Invoke Web Services from XQuery: Use the Stylus Studio Web Service Call Composer to design and test any Web service invocation, then generate the XQuery code needed to invoke the same SOAP request directly in your XQuery application.

• Integration with xqDoc: Generate user-friendly documentation of your XQuery libraries and modules for reference purposes.

• Support for Saxon 8.7 XSLT and XQuery Processor: Updated support for developing applications using the Saxon schema-aware XQuery and XSLT processor.

• Support for WSDL to Java Bindings: Integrated support for Apache Axis Java code generation directly within the Stylus Studio Web Service Call Composer.

• XML Adapter API Enhancements: Seamless access to relational databases, EDI, flat files, and other legacy data from your XSLT stylesheets or XQuery expressions can be done using Stylus Studio's high-performance Java adapter components that are now easier to embed and offer even faster streaming data performance.

Stylus Studio 2006 Release 2 XML Enterprise Edition is available for immediate purchase at the Stylus Studio online shop at www.stylusstudio.com.  An introductory 10% discount will apply for a limited time, the company says. Single user licenses for Stylus Studio XML Enterprise Edition start at $795.

The company has also announced a live, online presentation to be held on Thursday March 30, 2006 at 10:00AM and 2:00PM EST. The presentation covers developing and deploying an application that integrates XML, relational, and legacy data using Stylus Studio.  Participants can register by going to http://www.stylusstudio.com/quickstart/.