All parameters and options to control the batch process are stored in a single XML settings file. This way you can easily use the same settings over and over again and you can create new batch settings using already existing setting files as templates. This is a huge benefit compared to simple command line parameters which you need to remember and often result in multi line command strings.

Open your XML editor or any plain text editor which can save the file in Unicode UTF-8 or UTF-16. Even Notepad can do this. Type the following XML to create the simplest settings file for the batch:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<batch_settings>
  <batch_units>
    <log_document path="C:\xml_log.xml"/>
    <options/>
    <batch_unit type="validation" validator="XercesC">
      <folder_settings folder="C:\xml" subfolders="true"/>
      <file_extensions>
        <extension>xml</extension>
      </file_extensions>
    </batch_unit>
  </batch_units>
</batch_settings>

This settings XML only specifies the necessary parameters:

• Start the batch at folder "C:\xml"
• Include all subfolders in the batch
• Try to validate all files with extension .xml
• Save the log file to "C:\xml_log.xml

Don't forget to set the encoding on saving the file if you don't use an XML editor to create the file! For a complete list of options in the settings XML please take a look here.

Everything is prepared to run the batch. Open a command prompt at your ValidatorBuddy installation folder and enter the line to start valbuddy.exe with the settings XML:

Of course the batch can take a while depending on how many files with .xml extension are located at C:\xml. In my case there were only 126 smaller XML files and not all of them have a schema assigned. So ValidatorBuddy finished the batch in just a second.

If the batch process takes several minutes or hours you can open the log file at any time to check the progress while ValidatorBuddy is still running.

I prefer Altova's XMLSpy for all XML related tasks so here is a screenshot of the log in the pretty Grid View of XMLSpy: