[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns

• To: "David Rosenborg" <darolst@p...>
• Subject: Re: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
• From: Jeni Tennison <jeni@j...>
• Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 10:35:42 +0100
• Cc: "Mike Champion" <mc@x...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <003701c26b22$cdb47110$a25fd7d9@TYPHOON>
• Organization: Jeni Tennison Consulting Ltd
• References: <UTHBIF52D8NM4XID632KEVRWU1WB4X.3d9c9229@MChamp><003701c26b22$cdb47110$a25fd7d9@TYPHOON>
• Reply-to: Jeni Tennison <jeni@j...>

Hi David!

>> I've heard talk about an XSLT "lint" that would catch this kind of
>> error with knowledge of the input schema/dtd but without static
>> typing built deep into XLST or reference to types in the
>> stylesheet. Is such a thing just a thought experiment, or has
>> anyone done such a thing?
>
> Yes, I have (probably not the one you've heard of though since I've
> never made it public). It works along the following lines:
>
> Transform the input stylesheet into a new xml document where each
> XPath expression and pattern has been turned into an XML structure.
> Apply a second transform to this document which also reads a schema
> (RELAX NG in my case). The result of this transformation is an
> enumeration of patterns and XPath expressions found in the input
> stylesheet, which can never match or select nodes in a document
> which is valid against the input schema.

Wow, that sounds great! Can you be persuaded to make it public, or is
it something that you're building into a commercial tool?

> As you point out this is done without any schema or static typing
> knowledge built into XSLT. So this kind of static checking is really
> not an argument to build schema support into XSLT.

And it's something that's used at *design time*, to help the
programmer create a better stylesheet, rather than at *run time* to
hide the mistakes that they've made. That seems really beneficial to
me.

Cheers,

Jeni

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
    • From: "David Rosenborg" <darolst@p...>

• References:
  • Re: RE: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>
  • Re: RE: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
    • From: "David Rosenborg" <darolst@p...>

• Prev by Date: RE: RE: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
• Next by Date: Re: RE: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
• Previous by thread: Re: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
• Next by thread: Re: XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread