Re: [xml-dev] Here's what I've learned over the last several months abou

[alavinio@gmail.com]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 5:07 AM, nico <ndebeiss@gmail.com> wrote:

I do not think it is possible to XMLize everything as it means that all possibly needed data treatments and data sources have been identified and standardized in order to be triggered in a declarative way.
What about somebody who wants to use another data language like JSON in order to interact with its Ajax GUI ?
I think XProc should let the door open to a java written step, providing a class we could extend in order to write a special transformation step.

There are already ways to reach non-XML
data from XML tools that don't require changing the specification, or
even writing special transformation steps.

For example, I gave a presentation at XML '07 on using a custom resolver to translate file formats on-the-fly.
The paper is at http://2007.xmlconference.org/public/schedule/detail/307 and the PPT includes an embedded ZIP file with example code.
While
it shows CSV and a primitive EDI parser for XQuery and XSLT (without
changing the XQuery or XSLT processor to use them) the same could apply
to XProc.
And a demo showing our JSON converter can be found at http://www.xmlconverters.com/tutorials/json-and-xquery.html

There
is also the method of parsing non-XML data using unparsed-text() in
XSLT. This was probably taken to its limit in the posting by Dmitri
Novatchev where he demonstrated a JSON parser written in XSLT. See http://dnovatchev.spaces.live.com/?_c11_BlogPart_BlogPart=blogview&_c=BlogPart&partqs=amonth%3d7%26ayear%3d2007

Hope this helps.

-- 
Tony Lavinio       DataDirect Technologies       alavinio@datadirect.com
High-performance XML Processor: DataDirect XQuery http://www.xquery.com/

EDI/Flat File<->XML Converters (Java|.Net) http://www.xmlconverters.com/