Re: [xsl] Speed: xsl with xml vs. html and the world

Subject: Re: [xsl] Speed: xsl with xml vs. html and the world
From: "M. David Peterson" <m.david@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 01:06:34 -0600
Before this conversation gets too far down the road maybe some clarification as to whether you are referring to serving up XML that is then transformed by the client using a referenced XSLT file or XML that is first transformed on the server and then served up as HTML. If your question is concerning doing everything on the server then what Josh Canfield stated would be pretty hard to argue with. However, if you are referring to serving raw XML to the client for client side transformation then your question definitely becomes more subjective to many possible factors: client hardware + xsl processor being used etc...

If you are speaking of server side transformation to subsequent HTML stream you also need to consider the fact that most modern day web servers are smart enough to cache often used transformations and as such the difference between static and dynamic content will only be seen during the first request for the file and will be negligible at best for all subsequent requests if the source xml and xslt have remained unchanged since the previous request. With this in mind its tough to argue whether transforming an entire site into HTML first and then serving it as static content makes more sense than simply letting the web server worry about the optimization of content serving and you worry about what that content is going to be and what it should look like. This argument becomes even more prevalent when you consider a web that is comprised of more than just a typical desktop or laptop. With handheld devices and web appliances added to the equation the abilities of a web server to optimize requests becomes that much less of a luxury and more of a necessity as it allows you to focus on creating templates that can morph the HTML to conform the intricacies of the requesting form factor instead of worrying about building static HTML for each of these form factors and then telling your web server which one should be served to which client. The management of such a system would be a monster.

Hope this helps clarify things a bit!

Best regards,

<M:D/>

Amir Yiron wrote:
I agree with you, Daniel. It's not a black & white question.
It depends in many parameters.
For example, the use of xml/xslt could save a lot of traffic in the net if
your final HTML shows a large table - because the XML has only the pure data
used for every row, and the graphic representation of a row (which is usually
much larger than the pure data) is given once in XSLT, and not duplicated for
every row as in HTML...

b.t.w. as you mention that,
how would you instruct IE6 to cache certain files (say xslt)?
I made some play with HTTP header fields, but failed...

Thanks,
-- Amir

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Joshua [mailto:daniel.joshua@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 8:06 AM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [xsl] Speed: xsl with xml vs. html and the world


Well I am not too sure on that...


If by speed you mean internet bandwidth (hence file size), then maybe
depending on the situation serving a XML (with data only) + XSL (with
presentation instructions) might be better, especially if the template is
used often by other pages that would have cached the XSL.


Regards, Daniel


-----Original Message----- From: Josh Canfield [mailto:joshcanfield@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, 19 August, 2004 1:45 PM To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [xsl] Speed: xsl with xml vs. html and the world


Performance wise you can't get much faster than feeding up a static html file...

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 01:52:51 -0300, IceT <icetbr@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

My lastest messages in this list has remembered me of this question. I
belive it may have already be discussed here, but could someone please
explain to me a little bit of the state of the art of the creation of
webpages?

I mean, specially regarding xml and xsl. Which is better (speedwise at
least): to publish an xml file to be rendered with an xsl or to
preprocess it and generate an html file to be used? I believe html is
faster, although not dynamic. But there is many ways to add dynamic code
to html. So wich is the way to go? Is the answer related to the size of
the page?

Also, if I were to preprocess my xml + xsl files, I could use as well
xslt 2.0, because I wouldn't need to worry about incompabilities.

thanks

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