RE: [xsl] Request help in understanding: node instance of schema-element(node)

["Michael Kay" <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> But I have a personal curiosity, related to Roger's question 
> in this thread.
> 
> I would have preffered a syntax
> 
>      <xsl:value-of select="if (//test instance of
> schema-element(test)) then
>                              //test * 2
>                              else 'Error'"/>
> 
> Without doing, <xsl:import-schema 
> schema-location="test.xsd"/> in the 2.0 stylesheet.

Many of the benefits of schema-awareness come from being able to use the
information at compile-time, to do static checking of the stylesheet and
compile-time optimization. While it would be theoretically possible to do
all checking at run-time, and thus to refer to type names whose meaning is
not known until run-time, you would lose most of these benefits.

Of course there are languages like Java that supplement compile-time type
information with run-time introspection. I would certainly like it if XSLT
were able to do introspection of the schema information at run-time. But
there are a lot of debates about how this is best achieved.

> Does Saxon-SA support 
> xsi:schemaLocation method as well (and I don't do -val / 
> -val:strict) ? If Saxon doesn't support xsi:schemaLocation 
> method, my curiosity is, why not?

Saxon uses xsi:schemaLocation where appropriate to identify where a schema
can be found. It doesn't use it as a signal to tell you whether validation
is wanted or not. I don't think that is the intended purpose of
xsi:schemaLocation, and I don't think it's a useful way of doing it - I
think it's common for users to want validation even when there is no
xsi:schemaLocation, or to want no validation even when there is an
xsi:schemaLocation.

To be honest, even though Saxon does use xsi:schemaLocation for the limited
purpose of locating a schema once validation has been requested, I don't
think it's a good idea to use it. If you are validating a document then
that's probably because you don't trust it, and if you don't trust it, then
why should you trust its schemaLocation attribute?

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/