XML development with plug-ins as a service

XML has quickly become a mainstream language in software development. Not only is it used for message and document interchange, it is also used to define application logic and interfaces. However, modern general purpose integrated development environments have rather limited support for XML development. The wide variety of XML based languages makes it a challenge to build tools for comprehensive support of XML development. In this paper, we present a library exposed as an add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio and a command line tool to improve the experience of editing XML files by providing access to subscribable service-based pluggable helper tools. The tools offer developers new means to check their XML against good and bad practices and possibly even automatically fix errors in XML or improve the files conformance with development guidelines.