Re: [xsl] Sorting and Grouping Alphabetically: Two Levels

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

At 11:08 AM 1/8/2008, David wrote:
> OK so xslt 1 then, you didn't say if x:node-set() is available.

Also, simply running two passes, i.e. a preparatory pass before the 
final rendering pass, is sometimes reasonable. Such a preparatory 
pass can also be  useful for other purposes, albeit at the cost of 
making your production pipeline more complex as well simply being 
impractical in certain architectures. But there's nothing inherently 
wrong with doing this.

XSLT 1.0 is really optimized for transformations that render data 
that is already fairly well organized for the purpose, whatever that 
may be. Of course, this is a circular definition ("it's good at what 
it's good at"), but given that in the early days, "documentary data" 
usually met this description when the purpose was display, and 
"structured data" was often served up by a database that could handle 
the necessary (re)organization, it wasn't an Achilles' heel, just a 
weakness. The grouping-and-sorting-together problem is really the use 
case that demonstrates that more power is often needed even in 
applications that are otherwise about as plain and straightforward as 
they come.

Cheers,
Wendell



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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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