Re: [xml-dev] Basic program structures in XSLT (was: Re: [xml-dev]Data-d

["C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com>]

Thomas Passin <list1@tompassin.net> writes:

> For a completely different (though still declarative) take on getting
> data from markup -
>
> https://blog.jonudell.net/2022/12/09/when-your-database-is-an-http-client/

Thank you for the pointer.  It is always interesting to see what other
people do, when they don't have access to XQuery and the html:doc() and
html:parse() functions of BaseX, or their equivalents in other XQuery
engines.

Of course, what feels convenient depends a lot on what one is already
doing. If I spent all my time in PostgreSQL and Python, Udell's approach
would probably be more appealing.  And for someone who does not always
have an XQuery engine running, the idea of using XQuery to do
screen-scraping might feel like a burden.

But Udell's basic idea -- run the script from inside the dbms so you
have fewer intermediate steps to walk through -- seems like a good terse
description of the way XQuery and XSLT programmers can do it, when they
have to load data from the web.


-- 
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
Black Mesa Technologies LLC
http://blackmesatech.com