Re: Bad News on IE6 XML Support

[Jeff Greif <jgreif@alumni.princeton.edu>]

The economics change in scenarios like this:

Many clients query the server repeatedly for some data from the server's
database, different data each time.  The server delivers an XML file
containing only the data and a PI for the XSLT stylesheet, which, after the
first time, is cached on the client.  The stylesheet transforms the
delivered data into an XHTML page containing tables and potentially SVG
graphics.  Offloading this work to the clients is of significant value to
the owner of the server, as long as the transformation can be done on the
client in a reasonable amount of time.  If it takes about a second to
display the page on your 200MHz machine what does it matter if it needs 100%
of the CPU?  The browser's rendering of the XHTML/SVG will likely be of
comparable CPU cost to the XSLT transformation, if not more.

These kinds of scenarios certainly occur in Intranets, but also potentially
for people looking in library catalogs, airline flight databases, legal
citations, or using search engines.  The only requirement then is that the
browser support XSLT and XML compatibly with the spec.

Jeff

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bjoern Hoehrmann" <derhoermi@gmx.net>
To: "Didier PH Martin" <martind@netfolder.com>
Cc: "XML Everywhere" <host@xmleverywhere.com>; "xml-dev"
<xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2001 10:24 AM
Subject: Re: Bad News on IE6 XML Support


> >Didier replies:
> >I though you would see why. But again, I just learn for the Nth time how
to
> >spell the word assume. I'll recap and do some math's.
> >a) a transformation takes 1 second to transform a document
>
> If you have a 1GHz machine, maybe. I'm working with a 200 MHz processor,
> a transformation certainly takes far more time than 1s. Additionally,
> users begin to access the web from a broad range of devices, not only
> these kinds of high-end workstations you assume. XSLT requires a lot of
> memory and processing power those devices don't offer. And who said, I'd
> use 100% CPU time for a laughable job as web browsing?
>
> >b) you get simultaneous 1000 hits on your server. Therefore the
processing
> >time reserved for transformation is: 1 X 1000 = 1000 seconds.
>
> You want to tell me, transforming the same document 1000 times performs
> better than transforming once and delivering 1000 times? Well, if you
> don't cache transformation results, you are asking for trouble, but
> that's *your* fault, since *your* design is broken.
>
> >c) if the transformation occurs on the server side, this same server just
> >got its workload increased especially if the processed XML document is
> >dynamically produced by a server side script.
>
> I'm sorry but delivering the same XSLT transformation sheet to 1000
> clients takes far more resources than one simple transformation.
> Dynamically generated documents don't count; those scripts should have
> produced XHTML instead of something else.