RE: [xml-dev] XML Schema: "Best used with the ______ tool"

["Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>]

> I would actually be interested to hear about any non-trivial 
> and practical applications other than "XML in, XML out", 
> format changing kind, that are written exclusively in XSTL/XQuery.

How about an application for managing the creation, processing, and review
of capital spending proposals in a large international corporation. The
proposals are entered by form-filling using XForms, and each proposal is an
XML document in an XML database. The rules defining the approval process
(based on the nature of the capital project) are defined in a business rules
document, also XML, (for example "anything over $1m requires CEO approval")
and the abstract roles defined in that document (such as "CEO", or "finance
controller, Taiwan") are mapped to real people in another XML document
generated by a transformation of an XML dump of the LDAP directory. There's
also an XML document that defines the corporate reporting structure, or
actually two structures one functional and one geographic. These rules are
used to construct an approval schedule for the proposal, which is also
stored in the XML database, and emails are sent to the relevant people at
the relevant times, with clickable URLs that they can use to access the
application and approve or deny requests, or ask for more information.
There's a full query/reporting system built using the same technology: you
define a query by form-filling using XForms, and this generates an XQuery to
get the data from the database and an XSLT stylesheet to format the query
results.

I believe the only parts of this application which are not written in XSLT,
XQuery, XForms, or the Orbeon XML pipeline language (a precursor to XProc)
are one or two simple extension functions to do things like sending an email
or translating Base64 data from the LDAP directory. 

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/