RE: [xsl] Inverting a Stylesheet

["Michael Kay" <mhk@xxxxxxxxx>]

> If I can transform a specific XML to, say, a specific HTML 
> document like 
> this
> 
>   data.xml ----------------> data.html
>                data.xsl
> 
> is there an algorithm (e.g. called "invert") that, given the 
> input data.xsl 
> can produce  invert(data.xsl) so that
> 
>   data.html ----------------------> data.xml
>                invert(data.xsl)
> 
> ?
> 
> IOW, is there an algorithm, that can (more or less) exactly 
> produce the re- 
> transformation from the transformed result back into the source?

It's easy to demonstrate by example that this is impossible. Consider
the stylesheet:

<answer xsl:version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="....">42</answer>

Since the result of executing this stylesheet is the same regardless of
the contents of the source document, how could you possibly reconstruct
the source document from the output?

Michael Kay


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