[xsl] Newbie general questions about XML/XSL relationship

[Chad Thatcher <chad.thatcher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I am trying to help in the design of an overall XML/XSL strategy for my 
comapny's CMS system which is going through its third re-write.  I have 
spoken with a friend who is very good at XSL and would like to expand on 
the comments he made regarding our strategy.

Firstly our CMS is heavily data oriented (no news or blogs or similar) 
designed for archaeological projects trying to keep track of thier 
sites, digs, gis and finds information etc etc.  On any given 
installation there may be up to 20 or 30 main data tables with several 
related tables containing more and/or repeating detail.  Each of these 
main data tables has a set of forms with navigation and all the bells 
and whistles (edit, browse and mixed edit and browse forms).  There are 
also lists of said data elements which link directly to the detail 
forms.  All pretty standard stuff.  There is a web based configuration 
tool that allows us and site administrators to add/remove and change 
what appears in these lists and detail forms.  This means we are not 
writing new pages everytime we deploy our software to another group or 
when an existing group wants to add another main data table to their 
database - we just add or alter the configuration.  Pages/forms and 
navigation are all generated on the fly using the configuration details 
so this would seem to be an ideal candidate for XML/XSLT.

Currently we are leaning towards getting the configuration tool to 
publish XSLT templates (as and when the configuration is changed) for 
each mode (edit, browse etc) and each target (browser, wap etc) for each 
main data object/aspect.  I am told by my friend this is already going 
down a slippery slope as the XSL should not change and have all the 
capability in it already.  We are planning on keeping the XML as pure 
data - so not even have attributes for table fields like 'maxlength' etc 
as that would all be handled using the configuration tool and hence 
published in the XSL template for that particular data object.  Certain 
common elements like menus, headers and footers would all be included 
but I am not so sure about the main approach now.

If any of this is at all clear and you have any comments, please please 
do as I would really appreciate them.


Thanks,

Chad.