Re: [xsl] LINQ to XML versus XSLT

["James A. Robinson" <jim.robinson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> still see a few vital requirements that I haven't yet seen a way to do
> in XSLT 2.0. A basic-functionality replacement would need to be able to:
> - work with relational databases (believe it or not, many of us still
>   need to work with these)
> - access HTTP data (headers, GET/POST data)
> - send e-mail
> - read/write binary data (admittedly getting picky, but the base
>   restriction from XML makes this hairy)
 
> there are several flavors out on the market these days, each of which
> seem to do it wrong in their own way from an XSLT-based perspective. It
> seems like it'd be a good idea to write up a spec for these common
> tasks, figure out the way to Do It Right, and design an XML-based
> language to do exactly that. Since both would Just XML, this language
> could work hand-in-hand with XSLT 2.0 (and other XML-based technologies

I think you're raising a good point.  To do exactly those things you
list above we ended up implementing services we could get at or talk
to via XSLT.  Once you've got a way of running HTTP POST operations
from XSLT, reading the results, it becomes simple to build XML wrappers
around SQL queries (think an XML version of the JDBC APIs) to interact
with an RBMS.  Running inside of Tomcat and a Servlet, it is possible
to generate an XML representation of the incoming HTTP request and run
ones XSLT transformation against that.  Sending e-mail is an HTTP POST
operation to a service point.  Reading and writing binaries is something
we're only half-way doing, but we are streaming it to and from various
locations using XML to communicate the various URIs, and we're building
that XML via XSLT.

I think your instinct to look for common specifications is exactly the
thing needed.  I don't know if those will develop (like ASF and APP
developed), but I do get the feeling that many companies are inventing
and re-inventing the same wheels w/re to XML and interoperability with
other services.

But once you've got those XML oriented service points, and hopefully have
everything addressable via URI, XSLT becomes a really great way to interact
with it all.

Jim

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James A. Robinson                       jim.robinson@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Stanford University HighWire Press      http://highwire.stanford.edu/
+1 650 7237294 (Work)                   +1 650 7259335 (Fax)