xml-dev - Re: Doing it the other way around (Re: transformations)

[Richard Lanyon <rgl@decisionsoft.com>]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Alexey Gokhberg wrote:
> Richard Lanyon wrote:

> > ... surely there should be a nicer way to do
> > things than a hybrid of several different programming languages. A
> > "pure" XSLT problem really shouldn't require a chimera
> > XSLT/ECMAScript/extension solution.

> There is nothing unusual in combining several programming languages
> together. The common example (already cited in this thread) is SQL.

Oh, sure. I use Perl/MySQL myself all the time when writing webpages,
but it isn't particularly neat, I just know it works.

> The fact is, that there are (almost) no pure transformation tasks in the
> real world. In most cases XML transformation proper is combined with
> some other form of data processing.

But saying "XSLT is fine because if there's a transformation it can't
do then you just embed it in another language" does make it seem as
though there were space for a better language, or for improvements to
XSLT.

> The natural solution is to select an appropriate
> programming language to code each module, then to use some (e.g.,
> scripting) platform to integrate modules.

I entirely agree, but I didn't think that's what was meant in the
original post by "embedding" XSLT in ECMAScript.

-- 
Richard Lanyon (Software Engineer) |     "The medium is the message"
XML Script development,            |             - Marshall McLuhan
DecisionSoft Ltd.                  |