Re: [xsl] best-technique for selective group and merge?

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:44 PM 3/2/2004, Ken wrote:
> At 2004-03-02 08:43 -0800, James A. Robinson wrote:
> > The feature can contain multiple configs,
> > each of which I want to merge across features:
> > ...
> > I want to be able to select /config_datastore/site/* and perform selective
> > grouping (on feature @name) and merging (on the feature/config elements)
> > to return:
> > ...
>
> I found I could wrap my head around this problem using variables instead 
> of keys.  An example is below giving your desired results.  Note how I 
> take advantage of the node-set comparison of a single value to a set of 
> values to get from all configs only those whose feature's name is in a set 
> of names.

I like this solution. What had occurred to me is to key directly to 
parameters, using a compound key value of its configuration id as well as 
feature name. But I think Ken's solution is cleaner and more elegant.

It's a case where variable-based grouping such as Ken demonstrates from 
time to time on the list has advantages over key-based grouping. Maybe we 
think of key-based grouping (or Muenchian document-scoped solutions in 
general) because we've gotten used to that pattern, and haven't quite 
internalized the other approach. But I'm making it a point to study the 
variable-based solutions when I see them, since this bias (at least on my 
part) almost undoubtedly comes from the natural inclination to do what I 
know works despite its being more cumbersome and difficult than a 
less-familiar alternative, even when that alternative is both cleaner, and 
arguably closer to the "spirit" of XSLT.

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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