xml-dev - Re: RE: Questioning XSL

["Steve Muench" <SMUENCH@us.oracle.com>]

There are plenty of customers I work with who want 
to build web pages and data structures for data-exchange 
by specifying a "template" of what they would like to 
come out and "plug-in" the data from their database query 
directly into the template. 
 
Many of these developers are familar with the declarative 
nature of SQL which lets them ask the database to 
"SELECT" what they want "FROM" the sources they need 
"WHERE" certain conditions exists. 
 
They are looking for a template-based way to create these 
pages and "datagrams" and are not willing to write 
DOM manipulation code to produce a simple web page output 
when something like: 
 
    <td><xsl:value-of select="salary"/></td> 
 
would be used to "plug-in" the data. 
 
I find many of Michael Leventhal's arguments of the 
form: 
 
   "You don't need XSL since you can do it with DOM" 
 
to be analogous to saying: 
 
   "You don't need SQL since you can get the data out 
    by using assembly language to iterate the bytes 
    on the disk blocks to retrieve what you need!" 
 
_________________________________________________________ 
Steve Muench, Consulting Product Manager & XML Evangelist 
Business Components for Java Dev't Team 
http://www.oracle.com/xml

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• From: Miles Sabin <msabin@cromwellmedia.co.uk>
• To: "'XML Developers' List'" <xml-dev@ic.ac.uk>
• Date: 21 May 99 09:11:05

Paul Prescod wrote,
> There is no programming language that quite captures
> XSL's optimized mix of "polymorphic dispatch", pattern 
> matching and convenient template description.

No, but do they have to be part of the *language*?

Wouldn't a hypothetical DOM level X with direct support 
for XSL style queries not address most of these issues?

Cheers,


Miles

-- 
Miles Sabin                          Cromwell Media
Internet Systems Architect           5/6 Glenthorne Mews
+44 (0)181 410 2230                  London, W6 0LJ
msabin@cromwellmedia.co.uk           England

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