Re: [xsl] XSLT Processors in .NET and Schema-awareness

Subject: Re: [xsl] XSLT Processors in .NET and Schema-awareness
From: António Mota <amsmota@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 18:10:42 +0100
So two more questions:

If i drop the "schema-awareness" can i use Saxon .NET in IIS as a
XSL/XPATH 2.0 processor? Is this product stable?

Are there plans from the Saxon.NET guys to port the SA version of Saxon?

I really like to install a Java based version, as i'm more confortable
with Java then VB or C#, but my boss didn't buy that...

On 9/23/05, Michael Kay <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Begining from this last one, what exactly is "schema-awareness" when
> > one talk about XSLTprocessors, what purposes it serves?
>
> Schema awareness provides the following three features:
>
> * the stylesheet can import a schema and use the types defined in the
schema
> in declarations of variables, functions, match patterns
>
> * source documents can be validated against a schema, and the types
assigned
> to elements and attributes by the process of schema validation then
> determine the types of values manipulated by the stylesheet
>
> * result documents can be validated on the fly as they are constructed.
>
> The main benefit of schema-awareness is that the software becomes more
> robust, in the same way as Java is more robust than JavaScript. By
> introducing stronger type-checking, you find the errors in your code more
> quickly, with less need to generate exhaustive test cases (actually, no-one
> writes exhaustive test cases; but you know that you should).
>
> It also becomes possible to write code that is more generic and therefore
> more reusable: for example, a template rule to format all dates, regardless
> of the actual element or attribute name. The value of this increases as
your
> schemas and applications grow in size and complexity.
>
> A potential extra benefit is improved performance, however, this depends on
> the optimizer of the particular processor.
> >
> > So my question are, what XSLT Processors exists that support XSL 2.0
> > and XPath 2.0, and optionally that are "schema-aware", for the .NET
> > platform?
>
> There are currently two schema-aware XSLT 2.0 processors around: Saxon-SA
> and Altova. Both will run on a .NET platform in some form, but neither is
> native .NET code.
>
> Michael Kay
> http://www.saxonica.com/

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