Re: [xsl] Advocate for C# .NET + 100% XSLT Processing

Subject: Re: [xsl] Advocate for C# .NET + 100% XSLT Processing
From: "M. David Peterson" <m.david@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 18:14:57 -0700
Cool! Look forward to hearing/seeing the result :)

Karl Stubsjoen wrote:

Yep, for at least 3 years my approach has been ASP + 100% XSLT.  Hmmm,
I honestly can't remember that last time I looped through a recordset.
It is just recent my move to .NET and C#, which is probably a leap of
appx. 100 times the language and environment that classic ASP ever
was.  It is fantastic! Well except for, and let me rerant (if that is
a word, and if it isn't it oughta be):  The XML you get from an
ADO.NET dataset is retarded!

I plan to follow your links, and dig into the broader technologies
available.  I have, and will continue to dabble in things like AJAX
and ClientSide transformations.  I will most definitely be avoiding
"ATLAS".. why?  and I've never even looked at it? Because I'm sure
there is a huge hook, and the hook is the microsoft way, and the hook
is probably a designer UI, and on and on... besides, how complicated
really is AJAX (rhetorical question)?

I'll be in touch, this weekend I am creating a web service (my own)
and am fairly deep.

Karl..

On 3/11/06, M. David Peterson <m.david@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Hey Karl,

I'm glad to see you have come to your conclusions.  This is EXCELLENT!
I find it weird when people link back to posts I made.  Its cool!  Just
weird.

All weirdness set aside, that post was made almost three years ago.  A
lot has changed since then speaking in terms of available technologies.
But the general notion of using XSLT as the primary driver for your
web-based applications is still the same.  Its just been spread out
across a broader surface area by passing the data to the client for
transformation. [see:
http://www.xsltblog.com/archives/2005/12/finally_someone_1.html]

Take a look at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7704. While I have kept
things EXTREMELY low key since, a ton of work has been done in  this
area since.  The mentioned project, WWULF (pronounced wolf) which stands
for WorldWide Ubiquarian Lingua Franca (maybe I shouldn't tell people
what it stands for... I think it kind of scares folks a little.. :)) has
continued to be refined, developed, and integrated with other
technologies I am working on, again very lowkey.  The follow-up post to
the post linked above is here > http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7855.
While that particular series of posts isn't finished, a lot of the
background work necessary to make all of this a reality has continued.
Russ and I both have a tendency to fill our schedules to their maximum,
and I have a tendency to push things even further than that.  We will be
picking that series up again when we have a few more pieces complete.

In the mean time, if you want to contact me offline, I would be happy to
share with you some of the things we're working on that will fit quite
nicely into your drive to push away from the complexities of the .NET UI
and into something MUCH more simple yet MUCH more powerful.

Enjoy your day!

Karl Stubsjoen wrote:



Yes, the IHttpHandler approach is an excellent approach and indeed
*ditches* the presentational aspect of ASP.NET nicely ; )
You can achieve similar by Killing the HTML code on an ASPX page and
then just knocking out the Page_Load event and othter auto-generated
code.  Infact, I've devised my own event driven model based on the
idea that every web project will probably flow through a MAIN
processing template then stub out to PAGE level processing.  Keeping
this "on-topic" I have also created generic XSL stylesheets that are
automatically included at the base level application code, but then is
replaced by more specific page level XSL stylesheets.  These
stylesheet inherit from a base stylesheet, well actually inherit from
a site stylesheet and then the base stylesheet.  Simple, yet genius.

Karl..

On 3/10/06, Nick Fitzsimons <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:




Karl Stubsjoen wrote:




I am an XSLT junky.. I get it.
I also get C# and .NET, and I too was a EXTREMELY heavy ASP developer
( Ref:  http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/200309/msg00227.html )

This is mostly a shout out, and feel free to shout back.

Is there such sites dedicated to this approach?  Oh, I should mention
that, to qualify as a C# + 100% XSLT Processing member, you must vow
to never NEVER use the .NET design UI.  Strip it out!  Lose the page
wrapped in a FORM tag!  Say goodbye to the calendar control!  Besides
you can write a better one with XSLT!

Karl..




At a previous job I got a good way through converting our existing CMS
(ASP + XSLT) to this approach, but wasn't able to get it to a deployable
state before business dried up and I was made redundant.

The approach I eventually settled on was to extend
System.Web.IHttpHandler, thus ditching all presentational aspects of
ASP.NET. It was a neat system and, if I get back into .NET stuff, I'll
do the same again.

FWIW, the clients I'm curently working with are taking the same
approach, but powered by the Java Servlet API. The architectural
similarities to my system are interesting, given that their version 1
system (we're live with version 2 in a week) was created about 5 years
ago. I suppose good ideas never go out of fashion.

Cheers,

Nick.
--
Nick Fitzsimons
http://www.nickfitz.co.uk/

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