Q 4 Dmitry Kirsanov (1): what is XSLT all about?

Dear Dmitry Kirsanov,

I'm new to XSLT, my interest has been sparkled
from the viewpoint of my SCWCD preparation.

What is XSLT all about, why do we need it? Does
it only really come in play in the context of
webservices?

Thanks, greetings,

Gian Franco Casula

XSLT enables you to translate XML files from one form to another.

The need for XSLT is due to the fact that it does this translation with much more ease than a programming language like Java does it, not to talk of the lot of codes that would be written if one has to do it with a language such as Java. Also XSLT is easier to learn and program compared to Jave thus making it much more attractive especially to web authors who do not know how to develop Java applications. Also remember that some browsers have capabilities of processing XSLT which means less work on the server if the processing is done by the browser.

i have tried convert xml to html and also text file for database process during my school day, but that was xslt 1.0, for xslt 2.0, will it having more powerful features ?

Re: XSLT in general: The simplest answer is that XSLT is a language with a limited purpose (manipulating XML data) but very high abstraction level. This means that many constructs that are quite laconic in XSLT would be wordy and cumbersome in other languages. In fact, once you learn XSLT, any kind of XML processing in other languages will look wordy and cumbersome to you

Re: XSLT 1.0 vs 2.0: The 1.0 was pretty much a proof-of-concept language. It was conceptually sound but lacked many conveniences that are hard to get by without in the real world. The 2.0 not only delivers a lot of such conveniences, but also further generalizes the data structures (everything is sequences now) and adds better integration with other XML standards. Overall, it's an exciting new level of XSLT that I highly recommend.

Originally posted by Dmitry Kirsanov:
Re: XSLT in general: The simplest answer is that XSLT is a language with a limited purpose (manipulating XML data) but very high abstraction level. This means that many constructs that are quite laconic in XSLT would be wordy and cumbersome in other languages. In fact, once you learn XSLT, any kind of XML processing in other languages will look wordy and cumbersome to you

Re: XSLT 1.0 vs 2.0: The 1.0 was pretty much a proof-of-concept language. It was conceptually sound but lacked many conveniences that are hard to get by without in the real world. The 2.0 not only delivers a lot of such conveniences, but also further generalizes the data structures (everything is sequences now) and adds better integration with other XML standards. Overall, it's an exciting new level of XSLT that I highly recommend.

thanks for the thoughful reply.

Thank you very much!