Re: [xsl] the future of xslt

Subject: Re: [xsl] the future of xslt
From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:08:15 -0400
At 2008-06-21 21:06 +0200, James Fuller wrote:
anyhow, its interesting to see that jquery sometime late 2007 surpassed xslt

http://www.google.com/trends?q=xslt%2C+jquery&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

xslt versus xquery shows that xquery is either so easy to learn that
no one needs to use google, or there is a lack of xquery content

http://www.google.com/trends?q=xslt%2C+xquery&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Or perhaps XML is being used more these days for element content rather than mixed content and the "pull model" of XQuery satisfies those who do not need the "push" model of XSLT. Learning XSLT covers off both pull and push, so my money is still on XSLT as the technology to learn ... though I'm sure you won't hear that from XQuery vendors.


For publishing solutions with XSL-FO my customers invariably are using mixed content, so XQuery doesn't even come into the equation. For others using element content only, they may not be aware of the modularity schemes of XSLT in stylesheet maintenance and deployment, and that XSLT stylesheets are conforming XML documents.

In all my customers' major projects I use my XSLStyle documentation methodology with my XSLT import trees of a dozen or more fragments ... all because the XSLT files are themselves XML and suitable for XSLT transformation into the Javadoc-like documentation. XSLStyle is an embedded documentation framework that allows any off-the-shelf vocabulary to be used for XSLT documentation ... it is delivered with support for DocBook and DITA and I have customers using each of these. On one project I used it recursively where the stylesheets for the US Intelligence Document XML vocabulary were documented using the vocabulary itself: you apply the stylesheets to themselves in order to produce the documentation. It also gave the development team practice using the vocabulary they were supporting.

Given that XQuery documents are not XML documents, this wouldn't be possible.

I don't think XSLT is going to die off any time soon, and I foresee only growing acceptance for it.

and just to see xslt in context with general web programming languages

http://www.google.com/trends?q=xslt%2C+ruby%2C+php%2C+perl&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Horses for courses ... programming problems differ, so I think that is an unfair comparison. I hope none of my customers ask me to implement a publishing solution in C++ or even Python.


Do any of these trends indicate anything with respect to peaking XSLT
adoption ?  ... considering these numbers I wonder if XSLT 2.0
adoption will be a very slow burn ?

Not from what I'm seeing. All my customers projects have moved to XSLT 2.0 and my XSLT 2.0 in-house training has been very popular. Not sure why the publicly-subscribed XSLT and XSL-FO training has been slow to catch on. We had a great class in Austin in January, but no demand for it since. I'm trying New Zealand next January as a new market opportunity to see if there is interest in XSLT 2.0 and XSL-FO 1.1 publicly-subscribed training, but the initial response has been disappointing and I may have to try Australia. Training, however, is susceptible to business slowdown and currency exchange sensitivities (my non-North American training is billed in Euros) so I'm sure that is impacting it as well.


So, in conclusion, I believe any investment made in XSLT 2.0 won't be a waste.

I hope this helps!

. . . . . . . . . . . . Ken

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