Hi John,
At 05:32 PM 9/23/2004, you wrote:
I don't mean to gripe and I am sorry to bug the list with this, but I seem to
be headed down a very deep and dark path with XSL. I'm just confusing myself
more the deeper I dig, both surprised and frustrated at how difficult and
complicated it seems for a beginner, and how many of the goals I research
don't seem possible without custom and third-party extensions (dynamic XPath
evaluation, etc.). I haven't even approached "how to navigate up my logical
hierarchy". I think I need to take a few weeks off and research XSL but I
have deliverables. I would be happy to RTFM if I could just find the FM
online, and it's so different from my background that I can't even figure out
what to search for.
You are not alone in this, alas; the problem seems to be getting more
widespread. You have actually put your finger on the nub of the it: that
you need to take a few weeks off and research XSL ... actually a good
three-day full-immersion course would probably do it, plus some
assimilation and "ramp-up" time. Except, as you say, you have deliverables:
such courses cost both time and money up front.
See, that three-day immersion course would probably work by asking you
first to deal with problems closer to what XSLT was designed for, the "easy
stuff" (down-conversion of well-structured datasets conforming to XML
"document types" known ahead of time), in the expectation that only once
you understand the basics of the processing model, the way XSLT uses XPath,
and so forth, can you realistically be expected to move on to more
challenging applications.
The reason it seems to me that your predicament is getting to be more
common is that XSLT is no longer in its infancy, so people know that
non-trivial problems can be handled with it. (Maybe it's a toddler who's
started to talk, and thinks it's ready for anything.) As the industry as a
whole is better able to take advantage of XSLT's strengths and
capabilities, pushing its boundaries to accomplish things that are
otherwise difficult or impossible, it seems inevitable that there would be
more instances both of projects that jump right into the deep water without
first exploring the shallows, and of programmers assigned to do that
deep-water work without the preparation.
None of this helps, I know, directly. Indirectly, maybe it's a help to know
that (a) people have climbed the learning curve in the past, even the steep
parts, so rest assured it can be done, (b) there are subscribers to the
list who have an interest in seeing that this continues to happen, so
you're not completely alone, and (c) your problem is a real one, of the
kind that sometimes is best dealt with by pushing back. Tell your boss
you're being asked to build a suspension bridge out of steel, and much of
your experience building with concrete simply doesn't apply, even if you do
know a lot about civil engineering. Generally speaking, "magic happens
here" is not really a viable business proposition, even if you make sales
on that basis.
Cheers,
Wendell
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Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285
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Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
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