XPathmania and XPath on TV!
August 3rd, 2007I’ve blogged about the Visual Studio extension XPathmania before. It’s a very simple little tool that lets you write and test XPath inside of Visual Studio 2005. No big deal if you already have tools like XMLSpy or XML Notepad but still. I like not having to start another application, opening the XML document I’m working with and so on. Doing stuff inside of Visual Studio just feels right and saves some time anyway.
One of the last episodes of dnrTV hosted Dom Demsak (Don XML), the creator of XPathmania. The show is 30% about XPathmania and 70% about XPath and XPath syntax in general. It’s kind of basic XPath but I think it can be useful for someone who feels they haven’t got full control of the language.
During the show they touch on XML namespaces and XML default namespaces. However they don’t really explain the difference between them and how it effects the document. Something that’s sad as I feel that XML namespaces (and especially default namespaces) is something that most people haven’t fully understood.
Anyway, if you got some spare time watch it or forward it someone you think should watch it. 
August 16th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Its really good to see more attention being paid to XPath within Visual Studio.
I’m kind of surprised, given the pervasiveness of XPath, that it has not integrated into the VS core. This may be because of LINQ, or because of XPath 2.0 which has only recently been put out there earlier this year.
Whatever the reason, there seems to be a good opportunity out there for the MVP guys and others to fill the gap and raise the profile of XPath, which once mastered can be immensely powerful!
An integrated namespace-aware XPath generator, could also help provide a useful insight into how namespaces work.
Phil Fearon