RE: XML Overlays and Deltas: Existing methods? Ideas?

[Joel Bender <jjb5@cornell.edu>]

Len wrote:

>My question would be if the definitions are too heavy for the 
>application of deltas.

Too heavy for my head, at least!

>Groves are too heavy for that.  XSLT might be a way to do it.

::sighs relief :-)

>...if I wanted to apply it without a special engine, isn't this just 
>a shorthand for an XSLT template?

Perhaps it is.  My mental picture of an XSLT engine is one that 
produces a new document given an old document and a template to 
apply.  In my world, 99.99% of the document remains the same.

Here is another view:  assume that two applications share a common 
XML file that has been parsed and is loaded into an in-memory DOM. 
The DOM has an interface facade that intercepts calls to 
removeChild(), bundles that message into a small XML document, 
broadcasts the document to everyone in the group, then continues the 
call as usual.  I'm looking for the contents of the document.  If 
there was an XML-RPC definition for the DOM functions, that might be 
something to consider.

I'm not against sending around little XSLT 'programs', as long as the 
processing model can be "in memory replacement", which might not be 
available in XSLT engines to date.


Joel