RE: Bad News on IE6 XML Support

[Miles Sabin <msabin@interx.com>]

Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote,
> I'm sorry but delivering the same XSLT transformation sheet to 1000
> clients takes far more resources than one simple transformation.

Hmm ... pretty clearly having the client do the transform offloads
work from the server, so what extra resources have you got in mind?

In raw bandwidth terms your claim probably isn't true. And even in 
those cases where it _is_ true, it's probably not all that 
significant.

Worst case first ...

  Server-side transform

    n x size of transformed doc

  Client-side transform

    n x (size of untransformed doc + size of stylesheet)

Now, would you expect the size of the untransformed doc + the size
of the stylesheet to be _vastly_ greater than that of the size the 
transformed doc? I wouldn't.

In less worst case circumstances I would hope that the stylesheet
would be cacheable (and cached, either on the client or at an
intervening proxy/surrogate), so we'd have,

  Server-side transform

    n x size of transformed document

  Client-side transform

    n x (size of untransformed doc + (size of stylesheet/hit rate))

which makes the client-side transform look a lot more competitive. In
fact, in the not unlikely circumstances that the transform causes
doc size inflation relative to the untransformed doc, the client-side 
transform might well have the edge.

So in the absence of solid empirical measurements I'd say this 
particular issue was moot.

Cheers,


Miles

-- 
Miles Sabin                                     InterX
Internet Systems Architect                      27 Great West Road
+44 (0)20 8817 4030                             Middx, TW8 9AS, UK
msabin@interx.com                               http://www.interx.com/