Re: [xsl] the future of xslt

Subject: Re: [xsl] the future of xslt
From: Liam Quin <liam@xxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2008 07:34:01 -0400
On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 11:28:47AM +0200, James Fuller wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 10:21 PM, Dimitre Novatchev
> <dnovatchev@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I am not sure these statistics are useful at all.
> 
> I agree that presenting anything as 'statistics' is potentially
> problematic, but these trends must be indicative of 'something' or
> plain wrong.

Not all "statistics" need to be meaningful.

> reason why I presented these trends was to understand why google would
> have declining trend for xslt ... doesn't seem to make any sense.

SQL has also "declined".  So have socks, although not as alarmingly
as "public nudity".  About the only significant increase I found
so far was "Google".

I think it suggests that more and more people are using Google as
a search engine, and not just a bunch of geeks.  Some terms that
don't seem to have declined: laundry, handbag, curtains, barbie,
trousers (although underpants are coming down in all regions),
"rolling stones", Mozart, ...

> pessimistically, I do not think we will ever see wide spread adoption
> of XSLT, like lets say java....

I think we already have widespread deplyment of XSLT.  The Java
statistics include other meanings of the word, more common in
the World Outside Computers.

> I do have a 'point' ... I am trying to gather adhoc and statistically
> relevant material on putting some % on the likeliness of any of the
> following occurring;
> 
> * will XSLT 2.0 experience significant adoption ? what about xslt 2.0
> in the browser ?
> * XSLT on other devices e.g. hardware, mobile platforms
> * will adoption flow from XSLT 1.0 to XSLT 2.0 or ... XSLT 1.0 to XQuery ?
> * will we have XSLT 3.0

I suspect that some other approaches to gathering this information
may be more productive.

XSLT 1.0 is in all major Web browsers today.  Well, if a browser
doesn't have XSLT I don't consider it to be major :-)

There are "hardware" network appliances with XSLT 2.0 in them today
(search for x35 xslt).

I don't know about XSLT 2 in the browser, nor XQuery, although I
wouldn't want to rule either of those out.  For what it's worth,
jquery impements at least some of XPath in JavaScript, which is
less insane than it sounds when you realise it also has a JSON parser --
I was reading a Linux magazine on the 'plane today that mentioned
that the way to turn a JSON stream into objects in the browser was
to use eval() on it, which as ironic as the cover of the magazine
had SECURITY on it in huge letters.  No, it needs to be parsed...
so, people are doing a lot more with JavaScript these days.

Right now, though, I think the "sweet spot" for XQuery is on the
server, taking advantage of indexes, heavy optimisation, and 
of course things like SQL connectivity.  For XSLT 2 it's less
clear: pretty much anyone using XSLT will benefit from XSLT 2.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/ * http://www.fromoldbooks.org/

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