Hi Andrew,
Just noticing this post after making an attempt this morning to get caught
up on email backlog.
On Thu, 22 May 2008 03:52:29 -0600, Andrew Welch
<andrew.j.welch@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Side question: does anyone know the latest on whether there will be a
Microsoft XSLT 2.0 processor?
I decided back in November when Chris Lovett's "Future of XML on the .NET
platform" surfaced -- highlighting the same old "If you, as one of our
customers, want XSLT 2.0 support, then please let us know" song and dance
they've been doing since the original "XSLT 2.0 Sir" post heard round the
XML world -- that it was pointless paying attention to what MSFT was doing
in the XML space. At least for the foreseeable future.
That said, Mike Champion made a follow-up comment[1] to Kurt Cagle's XML
predictions for 2008 on January 3rd of this year, which was about a month
and half after my "MSFT can ki$$ my a$$" rant spurred by the above
mentioned Chris Lovett post, that specified,
"LINQ to XML did indeed replace XQuery as the presumably
mainstream-friendly *alternative* to XSLT in .NET 3.5, but the
resources that might have been devoted to XSLT 2.0 went to building
XSLT tools (e.g. the new debugger), not to LINQ. Those folks are now
working on XSLT2, and it is reasonable to expect it in the next major
.NET release after 3.5. (Just my guess as a former team member!).
Whether a native .NET XSLT 2.0 implementation ever sees the light of day
is not really something I am personally losing sleep over. My guess is
that whether it be the next major .NET release, the one after that, or the
one after that, at some point MSFT will upgrade their XSLT implementation
to 2.0. But even in the best case scenario, with .NET 3.5 being released
this last November, we're looking at another year and half to two years
before there's any chance of a System.Xml.Xsl-based XSLT 2.0 processor
surfacing.
My personal advice: As usual, use Saxon on .NET. Build your applications
around it. In fact, use the non-portable Saxon-specific extension
functions frivolously. You can count on Dr. Kay making every possible
effort to build the fastest, most standards compliant, and most bug free
XSLT 2.0 processor for both the Java and .NET platform, and therefore can
count on your Saxon on .NET-based applications getting better, faster, and
more reliable over time. You can't, nor should you count on Microsoft to
make anywhere even close to the same effort.
Just my two cents.
[1]
http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2007/12/xml_outlook_for_2008.html#comment-2208372
--
/M:D
M. David Peterson
Co-Founder & Chief Architect, 3rd&Urban, LLC
Email: m.david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | m.david@xxxxxx
Mobile: (206) 999-0588
http://3rdandUrban.com | http://amp.fm |
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2354