Re: [xsl] Exslt implementation, was "When does sort occur?"

Subject: Re: [xsl] Exslt implementation, was "When does sort occur?"
From: David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 12:10:44 +0100



> I use MSXML 3.0 and I think it does not support EXSLT. If I am incorrect in 
> this, I will be glad to hear.
> 

Note that the maximum function is also available _in_ EXSLT as a
template rather than as a vendor-specific extension function so that is
another possibility (although  FXSL is a more complete solution for
template based functionality, if you are just looking for the max
function it doesn't make much difference). Several of the EXSLT functions
are available as templates if that is possible.

You could also of course just write a template directly that iterates
along a parameter containing the node set, and passing on a parameter
with the largest value so far.

Any of these solutions is likely to just have to make one pass over the
data to fond the largest so will have time proportional to the n if
there are n nodes to be accessed.

using xsl:sort and taking the first  requires less keystrokes to code in
xslt but will always take longer given a large enough data set (unless
you have a very smart query optimiser) as you first sort all the nodes
into a complete order and then ignore most of that information and just
take the first. You can not sort a list of values in order n time, most
likely it takes n log n.

David

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