Re: [xsl] following-sibling and xsl:sort

Subject: Re: [xsl] following-sibling and xsl:sort
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 17:10:03 -0400
Karl,

I think you may be misinterpreting what Dimitre said. At any rate, I took "should have a solution without using it" to mean "will also be solvable without it". No warrant is given as to whether that solution is "good" in any sense -- it could be very long, or require heaps of time and memory to run.

I don't believe Dimitre intended to imply that because you always have an alternative, you should not use xxx:node-set(). There is a set of cases for which the alternative you have may be theoretically possible, but prohibitively difficult in practice.

Because it is Turning complete, one could (theoretically) implement a JVM in XSLT even without node-set(); that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Cheers,
Wendell

At 04:49 PM 4/29/2005, you wrote:
> Therefore, any problem, which has solution using the xxx:node-set()
> extension function should have a solution without using it.

I tend to disagree with that statement.  I am in the middle of a
project now which is using xxx:node-set() quite regularly processing
xml fragments that have been transformed, grouped, sorted and in some
case summarized in order to drive other data validation and lookups.
I am having to ask questions like:  "Does this item exist with this
item? If so do they overlap, are they in correct combination with
these other items..." and so on..  However, my XSLT is probably just
ok, so maybe there is a better way.  I can give some examples of the
kind of data we are validating if you are interested.


On 4/28/05, Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 4/28/05, Karl Stubsjoen <kstubs@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Is the obvious (and only) solution to use xxx:node-set against > > transformed / sorted XML? > > The answer follows from the fact that XSLT is Turing-complete. > Therefore, any problem, which has solution using the xxx:node-set() > extension function should have a solution without using it. > > In the case of grouping and then sorting, one such pure XSLT 1.0 > solution can be found at: > > http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/200311/msg00659.html


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