Re: [xsl] Declarative Web Applications: A Modern Architecture

["Martynas Jusevičius martynas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You're welcome :)

I think one of the advantages of RDF over XML is its web-nativeness, namely
that URIs are first class citizens in the data model. This way, the request
URI is the same key as the entity ID in the database, collapsing/flattening
the controller in MVC and making the MVC paradigm much more generic.

I wrote about this recently:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7442533331113627648/
I also wrote this blog post series some years ago:
https://atomgraph.com/blog/data-driven-software-architecture-1/

I started myself with XML/XSLT but drifted to RDF close to 20 years ago :)

Best,

Martynas

On Fri, Apr 17, 2026 at 8:02b/PM Roger L Costello costello@xxxxxxxxx <
xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Martynas,
>
> Thank youbthatbs a very interesting perspective.
>
> Your formulation:
>
> Webpage = Transformation(Projection(Dataset))
> Webpage = XSLT(SPARQL(RDFDataset))
>
> really resonates with the architectural direction I was trying to
> describe. Itbs a very clean way of expressing the idea that many web
> applications can be understood as selecting relevant data from a dataset
> and then transforming it into a presentation.
>
> I also appreciate your point that a large class of web applications can be
> viewed as custom UX over domain-specific CRUD APIs. That aligns closely
> with the notion in the paper that much of what we currently implement
> imperatively is fundamentally data selection and transformation, and could
> be expressed declaratively when the data model is well-defined.
>
> Whatbs especially interesting is that your example shows the same
> architectural pattern emerging with a different underlying data modelbRDF
> graphs queried with SPARQLbrather than tree-structured XML, even though
> XML-based technologies such as XSLT still fit naturally into the
> transformation stage. That reinforces the idea that the core issue is not
> XML vs. non-XML, but whether the application is organized around
> declarative data flow or imperative orchestration.
>
> Ibd be very interested in reading your posts on this. It seems like a
> natural extension of the ideas in the paper, especially in terms of
> generalizing the projection + transformation model across different data
> paradigms.
>
> Thanks again for sharing thisbitbs a great contribution to the
discussion.
>
> Best,
> Roger
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