Re: [xsl] Comparing two XML documents

[Rahil Qamar Yahoo <qamar_rahil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi David

Thanks. That was very useful.

Well yeah I didnt include the entire chunks of code. But I've checked 
the File 1 in XMLSpy for well-formedness and it didnt complain. So that 
shouldnt be an issue. There is quite a bit of XML that has no logical 
equivalence in the other file but thats because they come from different 
sources which try to model the same concept. I assume there could be 
some sort of Rules which could also be established for parsing the two 
files.

But you've given me a good pointer to start off my task with. Any other 
comments or suggestions would be most appreciated.

Cheers
Rahil

David Carlisle wrote:

> It should be relatively easy to turn each of these into some normalised
> form using xslt such that you can then just run diff or some other text
> file differencing tool.
>
> I can't suggest the exact XSLT that you need as your excerpts didn't
> show enough of the structure.
> your xml file 1 isn't well formed (multiple top level elements) I assume
> there is a surrounding element that you didn't show?
> and you said
>
>  I have two XML documents which are logically equivalent
>
> but there are several elements for which the equivalence isn't obvious,
> eg what corresponds to <level>16</level> in your 2nd format?
>
> howver running
>
> <xsl:template match="code[@type='relationship constraint']">
> relationship constraint: <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/>
> </xsl:template>
>
> <xsl:template match="IMPLIES">
> relationship constraint: [<xsl:text/>
> <xsl:for-each select="CONCEPT">
>   <xsl:value-of select="@name"/>
>   <xsl:if test="postition()!=last()">, </xsl:if>
> </xsl:for-each>
> <xsl:text>]</xsl:text>
> </xsl:template>
>
> will turn
>
>   <code type="relationship 
> constraint">[MildSeverity,ModerateSeverity,SevereSeverity]
>                                        </code>
>
> and
>
>    <IMPLIES>
>            <CONCEPT name="MildSeverity" ref="10238"/>
>            <CONCEPT name="ModerateSeverity" ref="10239"/>
>            <CONCEPT name="SevereSeverity" ref="10240"/>
>        </IMPLIES>
>
> both into
>
>
>
> relationship constraint: [MildSeverity,ModerateSeverity,SevereSeverity]
>
> which should allow for easy comparison.
>
> David
>
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