[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Simplicity of XPath
I actually think that people have problems with XPath for 2 reasons. Obviously, these are not the only reasons, but these are the primary difficulties I have percieved in working with people using MSXML. 1) The only way to use it is in XSLT. -The reason I say this is because a have encountered *many* developers who depend heavily on MSXML's selectSingleNode() and selectNodes() calls, often using those as an alternative to pure DOM calls. I very rarely see complaints of confusion from these users, while I regularly see people struggling with XPath in the context of XSLT. The developers using selectSingleNode() and selectNodes() found that this was easier to code, and produced less fragile code, than just DOM core. These are mostly people who are passing data around, typically as a way to 'easily' exchange data between orgs within large companies, or between companies. I say 'easily', because actually getting organizations to agree to this faces many of the same political/practical/security issues as any RPC mechanism, but because of it's simplicity and platform independent nature, people tend to be much more agreeable to use it than CORBA/DCOM/DCE RPC/etc.. 2) XPath is set-based, but has a syntax which resembles common path navagation syntaxes which are not (file paths/URLs) -I have encountered confusion over the fact that "a/b" matches a set of <b>s which may themselves be inside different <a> elements. People usually can keep track of the set semantics for the outer-most level ("/b" in the above case), but forget that it applies to the entire path. Derek Denny-Brown -----Original Message----- From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) [mailto:clbullar@i...] Sent: Friday, November 10, 2000 7:26 AM To: Matt Sergeant; xml-dev@l... Subject: RE: Simplicity of XPath IME, it tends to divide along backgrounds. Not everyone coming to the party was formerly a DesPH. On a scale of things, I don't think it is THAT hard but I've spent a lot of time on the phone lately with power C++ toTheMetal programmers who can't get it without a lot of time in. I can't tell if it is resistance to techniques they label as "stupid" (really, they do), or because the combinations of bracket types plus abbreviations plus getting it clear which context is in effect at any given time plus what functions do what is more than they can bear at this late date in their careers. Consensus be hanged. Men at work. ;-) Len http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -----Original Message----- From: Matt Sergeant [mailto:matt@s...] "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" wrote: > > Being able to reapply XPath has advantages > on the learning curve although the syntax of XPath isn't > all that easy to learn. I always thought it was one of the easier aspects to pick up. Is there a general consensus on this matter? Or is it that the simple (abbreviated) parts of XPath are easy, but the non-abbreviated parts are hard?
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