Re: [xsl] XSLT, Web applications, and "native XML databases"

Subject: Re: [xsl] XSLT, Web applications, and "native XML databases"
From: Robert Koberg <rob@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 12:26:15 -0500
On Jan 7, 2009, at 12:05 PM, Wendell Piez wrote:

Hi,

At 09:00 PM 1/6/2009, Robert wrote:
I am a huge fan of XSLT and document-oriented XML.

I realize this may be slightly off-topic, but I am looking for a
Java-friendly (XSLT-friendly) XML database.

Depends what you mean by XSLT-friendly, but I would say there isn't one (perhaps X-Hive - EMC is but not much is known about it).

But, eXist is the most common open source (free) XML DB. If you have
an extra million bucks sitting around, you will probably want
MarkLogic's offering.

This is an excellent question, and even on-topic if we insist that a requirement be that the db also work well with XSLT.


I've messed with more than one XML db, but nothing that fits the bill directly. eXist, which has been on my list for a long time, might. eXist does have a contingent of vocal fans -- some of whom I hope we hear from, especially if they can report (a) how well it works with XSLT and (b) what its actual strengths and weaknesses are.

eXist can perform an XSL transformation through an extension function, but you have to serialize the result to a source for the transformation. It does not work natively on the DB like XQuery does. I believe there is an effort underway to support native XSL, but I haven't heard much since the initial proposal.


So, sure you can use XSL, just as you can use java, perl, javascript, etc. You just lose the benefit of a native XML DB. You can filter out unnecessary 'things' with XQuery to get the source for a transform as small as possible.



To broaden the question, hanging in the air is the concern over whether and how XML db technologies will support XSLT. As we've discussed earlier on this list, this seems like a natural fit, allowing for XQuery for optimized data manipulation and XSLT for presentation and interchange. But for whatever reason, DB vendors seem to be skittish about XSLT.

Where's the DB that will break through this and take over the market with the superior mix of technologies?


X-Hive (bought by EMC) supposedly has native XSL support. I haven't looked recently, but I could find little to none information about it.

-Rob

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