Quiz: static transformation vs. JIT generation

[Razvan MIHAIU <mihaiu@mihaiu.name>]

Hi,





    On an XML quiz I met the following question:

= = =

A company wants to build a Website for trading shares. They have the 
latest updates coming to them from various exchanges in XML format and 
they need to be able to supply the updates to the client on various 
platforms: web + mobile + handheld devices. A processing application 
would analyze the incoming documents and update the central database. 
Since this is a real-time process the performance is a critical requirement.

Which one would be the best approach for storing the rate updates ?

A. separate xml documents for each share
B. a single document for each share
C. static transformations for generating the output XML documents
D. just in time transformation of output XML documents


= = =

My answer: B
The correct answer: C



    To my understanding 'static transformations' means to generate HTML 
pages from an XML source and to feed those pages to all the clients. 
'Just in time transformations' means to transform the XML to HTML for 
each client that requests the data.

    Is it practical to apply 'static transformations' to some data that 
needs to be processed "real-time" ? If yes, how often would you apply 
the 'static transformation' ? If the data changes every second you will 
have to apply the 'static transformations' every second !

    Is there another way to interpret this question ?



Regards,
Razvan



www.mihaiu.name