[xsl] Re: is there any tool that automatically generates XSLT?

Subject: [xsl] Re: is there any tool that automatically generates XSLT?
From: "Dimitre Novatchev" <dnovatchev@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 06:47:48 +0100
> Does anyone know of any tool out there that can
> automatically generate the required XSLT if it is
> given a sample input file and output file?

Such a tool cannot exist (in general).

As we have witnessed time after time in this list and other newsgroups, a
simple pair: (xml document, result) is not sufficient to identify a single
transformation. This means that if a transformation is suggested for a
specific pair (xml document, result), it may not in general be useful in
processing other xml documents that have the same structure/properties.

A DTD or other kind of schema cannot fully describe an xml document,
therefore any tool that is given a schema of the source xml document still
may not have a precise formal description of its input. A formal description
of the output may be even more difficult to provide, as the output of an
XSLT transformation is not constrained to xml documents.

Lastly, we have seen numerous examples when people cannot well describe
their problem even informally and after many tries...

It seems to me that if such tool existed and was really useful, it would
have first learnt to think.


Cheers,

Dimitre Novatchev,
FXSL developer,

http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/ -- the home of FXSL
Resume: http://fxsl.sf.net/DNovatchev/Resume/Res.html




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