Just a couple of days ago, I was using XMLSpy at work to do some test XSLT transformations. Our XSL templates here at work are pretty complex, with a few xsl:include tags to import common code. After trying for nearly a day to get XMLSpy to render my transformations, I gave up. I tried every available rendering engine, I tried inserting all of the included code into one file, I tried simplifying the XML – all to no avail. I finally wrote a small C# program to do the transformation, which worked much better than XMLSpy. I’m writing this because I just came across a story about the ever-increasing price of XMLSpy. I have wondered myself why it’s so expensive, but large companies seem to be willing to dish out the dollars.
By late 2000, the price of XML Spy had inflated to $149 a user. By the end of the next year it hit $399 a user. By late 2006 it was up to $499 a user (at some point dropping the space between XML and Spy, becoming XMLSpy). As I write this it’s up to $539 a user.