RE: XSLT 1.1

[Kay Michael <Michael.Kay@xxxxxxx>]

> XSLT 1.1 specifies that it will only consider Java and 
> EcmaScript bindings.

There is no XSLT 1.1 specification, only a requirements document.

> It seems to me that the extension bindings don't have to be
> language-specific. Why can't an XML-based binding be defined 
> to standardize on a cross-language specification? 
>
Because there is no suitable cross-language definition of data types that it
can refer to. SQL has exactly the same problem. If you make a call on

 my:proc(3.2)

and proc is written in Java then the spec needs to say

- where to look for a function called proc
- what to do if it finds more than one
- how to convert the argument 3.2 into the Java data type expected by the
selected method (e.g. what if it expects a BigDecimal?)
- how to convert the result of the selected method back to an XPath value.

All these things are necessarily Java-specific.

There are of course some things one can say that are not language-specific,
and no doubt the spec, when it emerges, will try to achieve as much
generality as possible.

Mike Kay


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