RE: [xml-dev] Anyone wanna speculate about what this means?

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

Nobody is trying to have a religious war with you. Mike asked a question and I gave an answer based on my experiences with users of XSLT both in the .NET Framework and MSXML. I'm glad that people like you can find the time to understand the subtle nuances of XSLT but for a large number of our users it is inaccessible and unfriendly. XQuery is a step in their direction.  

________________________________

From: Charles White [mailto:chuck@tumeric.net]
Sent: Sun 2/16/2003 8:28 PM
To: Dare Obasanjo; Mike Champion; XML Dev
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Anyone wanna speculate about what this means?



I think I made a fair inference, and I would also argue that XSLT isn't
unapproachable to the average XML developer. The invariability of XSLT
variables is not really a problem. I have run into very few problems that
can't be solved with XSLT.

I could just as easily argue that .NET is unapproachable because of its vast
object library, which takes countless hours to learn. It sort of redefines
verbosity. I would say that if your users, and I'm one of them, spent one
one hundreth the amount of time on XSLT they spend learning .NET, they'd be
fine.

My point is that religous wars are useless. I use .NET and XSLT and I'm sure
I'll use XQuery. I don't find one particularly more valuable than the other.
I just use whatever suits my purpose for a particular problem.

Chuck White
Author, Mastering XSLT, Sybex Books
http://www.javertising.com/webtech
http://www.tumeric.net

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>
To: "Charles White" <chuck@tumeric.net>; "Mike Champion" <mc@xegesis.org>;
"XML Dev" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 8:03 PM
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Anyone wanna speculate about what this means?


*sigh*

I am well aware of the answer to the question. If you had read my post
carefully you'd have realized that I was talking about the characteristics
of XSLT that make it unapproachable to the average XML developer. The
invariability of XSLT variables is probably the most frequently occuring
problem our users face with the language.

Whether XSLT 2.0 has similar features to XQuery is not really of note. After
all, Turing complete programming languages are all equivalent which doesn't
mean there aren't reasons why Java and C are more popular than SmallTalk and
Lisp.


________________________________

From: Charles White [mailto:chuck@tumeric.net]
Sent: Sun 2/16/2003 7:54 PM
To: Dare Obasanjo; Mike Champion; XML Dev
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Anyone wanna speculate about what this means?



I'm really suprised that someone with a microsoft.com at the end of their
email would issue this statement:

"(why is an xsl:variable called a variable if it doesn't vary?) "

The response to that query has been around a long time:

http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/200302/msg00620.html

 And so has the so-called workarounds to that "problem", which really hasn't
been a problem for most XSLT developers once they're comfortable with the
language.

XQuery does indeed look cool, but it's about as cool as XPath 2.0, which is
married to it, and XSLT 2.0, which benefits from that union. Anyone who
can't grok XSLT 1.0 but can grok XQuery will be able to grok XSLT 2.0.

Chuck White
Author, Mastering XSLT, Sybex Books
http://www.javertising.com/webtech
http://www.tumeric.net



----- Original Message -----
From: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>

>A couple of us feel that XQuery will some of the problems with XSLT that
have prevented it >from becoming the lingua franca for processing XML by the
average XML developer. XSLT's >unnecessarily verbose syntax, limited set of
useful builtin functions & operators and unfamiliar >programming model (why
is an xsl:variable called a variable if it doesn't vary?) have always >made
it seem inaccessible to many users who would otherwise benefit from it.
XQuery fixes >these issues which makes it more approachable to the thousands
of developers who have to >process XML data and have thus far limited
themselves to object <->XML technologies , >DOM or streaming APIs because
they couldn't grok XSLT.


XQuery is hot.





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