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Robin Berjon wrote:
>...
> I don't believe that either and I'd add that it takes a pretty narrow
> view on XML but I can in fact see use cases for having access to types
> in XPath. For instance when I see an XSLT processor chew for several
> minutes on a very predictable document (granted, it's Java based, but
> still) I think that if it had access to schema information it could
> optimize a lot of what it's doing by skipping entire subtrees.
First, a "sufficiently intelligent" XSLT engine could optimize based on
the schema without necessarily changing any of the syntax and semantics.
i.e. it could do type inference-like stuff. That's not necessarily
practical but until someone has tried and has published why it isn't
feasible we should hold open that door.
Second, if the document type is very predictable then maybe XSLT isn't
the best tool. You could take your schema, compile it into Java classes
or some equivalent for your favorite language, do some manipulations in
a language specifically designed for working with rigid structures and
then spit it out again. XQuery isn't far from being a transformation
language optimized for statically typed, rigidly structured data, but it
isn't sold that way.
Paul Prescod
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