Re: Complex XSL Application (I think)

Subject: Re: Complex XSL Application (I think)
From: James Robertson <jamesr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 12:27:33 +1000
At 11:26 24/02/1999 , you wrote:

  | Well we are trying to archive 160,000 employee records from an
decommisioned
  | human resources system. (Each record aproximately 10k therefore total
  | archive is around 1.6Meg).  This is Proof of Concept Trial in which we are
  | trying to prove the capabilities of XML and XSL.  There fore we would like
  | to as much as possible avoid the use of JavaScript and non XML XSL
  | technologies.
  | 
  | We are trying to provide very simplistic querying on the data.
  | 1) Find an employee by Service Number
  | 2) Find an employee by name segment
  |      eg I search for all records with Wendy in the name field
  |      Where the name field contains the whole name.
  | 
  | I have been experimenting with XML and XSL under IE5 and have made
  | progress.
  | 
  | However my next hurdle is
  | 
  | Using server side XSL and connecting that server side XSL up with client
  | side XSL.  I am just trying to get number 1) working.

Wendy,

As much as I love XML, I feel it is worth playing
devil's advocate here.

Now, from later responses to this post, I understand
you have stored your data in XML. Great. Lots of good
reasons for doing that.

I would ask however, what is the business case for
using XSL, and presenting XML to the client?

In other words, what are the benefits of doing this?

(The obvious downsides are: using a non-stabilised
specification; bleeding-edge technology; and enforcing
the need for IE versus any other browser.)

Instead, have you considered using a simple server-side
script that trawls through the XML, and generates an
HTML page containing the results?

There are plenty of technologies for doing this, ie
CGI, ASP, ISAPI, NSAPI, etc. And the XML->HTML
conversion can be done using heaps of tools, such
as Perl, Omnimark, Python, etc.

That way, the end-user is shielded from having to
know anything about the data. If they have a browser
of any kind, they can enter their request, and receive
their responses. Then behind the scenes you can do
anything you like.

Just a thought,

J

-------------------------
James Robertson
Step Two Designs Pty Ltd
SGML, XML & HTML Consultancy
http://www.steptwo.com.au/
jamesr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Beyond the Idea"
 ACN 081 019 623


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