Case Study: BSG

BSG is offering Unix system administration support for internet server systems as well as websites based upon a custom content management system (XMLServ).

Description of the challenge:

Managing quite large quantities of XSL based templates for an XML-based content management system.

How this affected your company?

We provide customers with websites based upon our CMS XMLServ. All interface-related customization is done via XSL, so this is a vital part of our business.

What made you choose Oxygen?

We were looking for a cost-effective cross-platform XML/XSL Editor due to our mixed development environment (Mac, Linux, Windows).

How do you describe the selection process?

After purchasing a single license for another product to test it out, we continued our search to find better options. Oxygen was the second product we've tested. Although we've found at least one additional editor fulfilling our basic requirements at that time (autumn 2002), Oxygen had some additional features we wanted to keep.

How do you describe the interaction with Oxygen support staff?

We had almost no contact with Oxygen support staff -- which is a good thing in the sense that this contact was not needed to do what we wanted to do with the product. On two occasions we contacted Oxygen support, once regarding a misorder of a license which was resolved immediately (we bought a full license instead of an update and were offered a refund or an extended maintenance period of which we choose the latter).

The other occasion was a simply resolved interface question as well as a minor extension, which to our delight we saw realized in a later update.

How good was Oxygen in solving your problem?

Using transformation scenarios and projects we can maintain and test XSLT sets separated by installations of our CMS XMLServ. Batch validation is also very helpful in checking XSLs before updating an installation. We use context and scenario sensitive completion, the XSLT debugger and XSL-FO transformation scenarios.

Describe the benefits after using Oxygen in your company:

Oxygen mostly outgrew our quite basic needs. Nevertheless we've had so many useful additions in the past that we still follow the quite frequent updates: besides what we initially used it for (editing and organizing quite large collections of XSLT files) it learned a lot regarding other XML-based technologies: SOAP/WSDL, schema generation as well as documentation with graphic support to analyze other schema files, XSLT debugger, different XSLT processors as well as FO support. While extending facilities in the space we're primarily into (XSLT debugging, XSL-FO) it helps us come up to speed with things we seldom use (SOAP/WSDL, schema) but sometimes need.

As basic as it may sound, we still appreciate the project support very much, switching between sets of related XSLT files is a real time saver.