Cart
[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]
1/13/2002 8:10:02 PM, Paul T <pault12@p...> wrote: > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Jens Jakob Andersen, PDI" <jens.jakob.andersen@p...> > > >Sure. And it is kinda more convinient to use CSV, because >CSV-based world has developed a sophisticated, convinient, >universal binding mechanizm, called "regular expressions". Hmmm, that's an interesting way to put it. What would an XML universal binding mechanism look like .... a clean integration of XPath and DOM (and maybe RELAX-NG)? A RELAX- NG data binding tool http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~dp8t-asm/java/tools/Relaxer/ ? Both Sun and Microsoft seem to be working hard to make it easier to use XML from ordinary programming languages; are either/both at least moving in the direction you want to see? >Regular expressions are not blessed by W3C, sure. But they are at the heart of RELAX-NG ... I hope we can distinguish "XML" from "the set of all specs that the W3C has put out dealing with XML" or "the picture of XML promulgated by the most visionary W3C working groups." >Or try rendering a real-life financial XML report >with XSL ( it may take a 100 of pages, >you know... ) Good point; this is very definitely a weakness of the current crop of XML technologies in the Real World. Crystal Reports and their competitors are just starting to handle XML data sources, AFAIK. Can anyone point us to a report generator rich enough to, for example, generate a real-life financial report from an XBRL document and that can be used by someone who knows little about XBRL other than the tag/element names and hierarchy and nothing at all about XSL/XSLT? In other words, something that required the user to know no more about XML than the current report generators assume about SQL knowledge? BTW, I recently surveyed the following, and IMHO none of them come close to fitting these requirements (although there is some XML support now and some pretty rapid progress) : http://www.crystaldecisions.com http://www.actuate.com http://www.elixirtech.com/ElixirReport http://www.brio.com/products/brio_reports http://www.jinfonet.com/ So, JJ, would a hypothetical "Crystal Reports for XML" that abstracted away the messier details of XPath, XQuery, and XSL (FO and/or XSLT) behind a decent UI help your friends significantly?
|
