"Deep-Equal Nodes" (Was: RE: [xsl] Can sets have order? )

Subject: "Deep-Equal Nodes" (Was: RE: [xsl] Can sets have order? )
From: Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 00:10:52 -0800 (PST)
> Not the same node, yes, but nodes which have the same values for
> all
> their attributes and attributes of subelements (i.e., which are
> deep-equal).  Such nodes may be exchanged in the node set without
> changing the behavior of any XPath query.
> 

I regard the whole notion of "Deep-Equal Nodes" as a misconception:

1. It already confused people into thinking that indistinguishable
nodes could exist.

2. Letting such "indistinguishable" pairs of nodes in an xml document
has all problems and anomalies of non-normalized data.

3. This will also lead to artificially increasing the necessary memory
and processing time for an XML document.

How to avoid such nodes? Here's one simple way:

<node1 ID="id1">
  <!--  Any contents goes here -->
</node1>

<node2 RefID="id1"/>

Dimitre.


__________________________________________________
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 
a year!  http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list


Current Thread