RE: [xsl] A beef with XSLT Sometimes too complicated

["Michael Kay" <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> xpath can exist without xslt but not the other way round. The 
> situation is (exactly) the same in XQuery, but XQuery is 
> usually regarted as an extension of XPath: that is XQuery is 
> a single language, with more constructs than XPath) whereas 
> XSLT is usually described is a two-language construct 
> consisting of xslt constructs and Xpath constructs. It's 
> pretty much a marketing angle which way you describe it 
> really. 

I don't think that's fair: it's a genuine technical difference, which
results in different strengths and weaknesses. In XQuery you have a higher
level of composability of expressions. You can write things like

<a>{2+2}</a> = 4

(which of course you need to do all the time), and you avoid duplication of
control sructures like if and for; but the downside is that you have a more
fragile syntax (harder to extend, harder to report and recover from syntax
errors reliably) and one that means XQuery source text isn't accessible to
XML-based tools.

That's a technical design choice, not a marketing angle.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/