Re: [xsl] Specification of a transform.

["Tony Graham" <tgraham@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, September 11, 2013 6:57 am, davep wrote:
> On 10/09/13 22:05, Tommie Usdin wrote:
>> In 2007 Wendell Piez and I wrote a conference paper on this topic.
>> "Separating Mapping from Coding in Transformation Tasks".
...
> Which raises the issue, if a non XSLT programmer is specifying,
> how might he/she do it, without those XSLT skills?

>From http://www.mulberrytech.com/papers/MappingTransformations/slide009.html:

 * Understand both source and target data
 * Ability to articulate complex relationships
    - clear to programmer
    - clear to content-owner
 * Strong analytical skills
 * XSLT expertise is not required!

A subject matter expert who groks XML structures can be better for this
than a programmer who groks XSLT but not the data.

With this technique, if you pre-think exactly how it will look in XSLT in
the mapping, you're doing everybody a disservice since the stakeholders
may not be able to follow too much XSLTese, the coders might not engage
their brains sufficiently and so flounder where you've left a gap (yet if
they do engage fully and write it their own way, your pseudo-XSLT mapping
is then a dead end), and the QAers won't have something they can really
work with.

Regards,


Tony Graham                                   tgraham@xxxxxxxxxx
Consultant                                 http://www.mentea.net
Mentea       13 Kelly's Bay Beach, Skerries, Co. Dublin, Ireland
 --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --
    XML, XSL-FO and XSLT consulting, training and programming
       Chair, Print and Page Layout Community Group @ W3C