[xsl] xml inheritance / xslt inheritance application

["Greg Fausak" <lgfausak@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not sure if this is the right group for this question.
But, here it goes.

I've modeled a xslt translation from a trivial
xml syntax to postgres.  One of the problems I've
run in to is the database column belongs to a table, e.g.:
<table name="test">
  <column name="col1" type="int" size="5" minvalue="50" maxvalue="10000"/>
  <column name="col2" type="text" size="50" notnull="true"/>
</table>

etc..

however, in databaseland, the column is often a domain descended
from another tree.  For example, the column could be 'studentid' and
that student
id could be used in many different tables because it is a foreign key.

So, in my source xml, I've introduced
<default>
  <column name="col1" type="int" .../>
...
and I changed the table xml to:
<table name="test">
  <column inherit="col1" minvalue="60" />

So, I translate this, but, it sure would be nice
if I could inherit the attributes and nodes of the default column
name and override what I want locally.  Does such a
construct exist either on xsl side or xml side?

I did some google searches on inheritance/subtyping and
there seem to be pretty strong opinions about the subject.
Worst case I can do a pre-pass on the xml text and use a heredoc
to expand this sort of thing.  Any ideas would be welcome!

Thanks,

---greg

-- 
Greg Fausak
greg@xxxxxxxxxxxx