Tool or library for comparing xml files
I am looking for an XML comparing tool that understands xml. It cannot be a line by line comparision like WinMerge or Beyond Compare.
An ideal solution would be one that shows changes similar to the way Word 2007 shows track changes. DeltaXML does this, but does not come with a real GUI 'out of the box' and is $500 per user!:
ExamXml works out of the box but displays the differences in a confusing manner. It does not have a concept of before and after, it just shows the differences:
(source: a7soft.com)
The tool should have the concept of using attributes as a key, so that it does not think that a reordered list of elements has changed. DeltaXML does this but I failed to set it up correctly for the screen shot.
UPDATE:
So far ExamlXML is the best out of the box solution. But it lacks the change management concepts of DeltaXML. Resulting in some usability problems.
DeltaXML is pretty much the solution I need, but something with more functionality out of the box would be better. DeltaXML requires writing java code to call the api, along with writing XSL to transform the xml into the expected input.
Answer
I am very surprised nobody mentioned Microsoft's XML NotePad
It's free and it can create a pretty good comparison, telling which elements/attributes have changed, moved, been deleted, etc.:
(Sorry if the screenshots are a little wide).
You can also apply XLSes to the XML file and do various editing operations. Well worth a try.