Re: [xsl] XPath "//", speed, and Saxon

[Tony Graham <Tony.Graham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Nov 03 2008 12:51:58 +0000, mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
...
> Incidentally, one minor comment
>
>>Only xsltproc provides a command-line switch for running the transformation
> time multiple times 
>
> Saxon has had such a switch for some time, though only recent releases have
> documented it (-repeat:99).

I had subsequently found the original three switches in the Saxon source
code and had mentioned them in later deliveries of the tutorial.

> I think there's another important (if obvious) point that's not made in the
> paper: don't assume that your performance problem is in the XSLT code until
> you've drilled down to that level. I did a bit of tuning for a client
> recently where it turned out 80% of the cost was spent in some simple
> user-written code to generate the XML input for the transformation.

To paraphrase Knuth (another giant who must surely have sore shoulders
by now): premature optimisation is the root of all evil.

Regards,


Tony Graham                         Tony.Graham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Director                                  W3C XSL FO SG Invited Expert
Menteith Consulting Ltd
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