[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Hello XQuery ... Goodbye XSLT?
On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 08:26:29 -0500, Roger L. Costello <costello@m...> wrote: > > Hi Folks, > > From my examinations, it would appear that XQuery is a superset of XSLT. I > wonder about the future of XSLT? I believe David Carlisle has it right: XSLT2 and XQuery are functionally very similar. (Michael Kay's chapter in XQUERY FROM THE EXPERTS compares and contrasts them very clearly). That means it comes down to essentially a matter of style when choosing to use or support one vs the other. Some of this is just a matter of whether one prefers to work in XML syntax (XSLT) or something more like a programming language syntax (XQuery). The biggest difference is whether one is comfortable applying the recursive template matching style encouraged by XSLT or the more conventional programming style of XQuery. In my experience working with developers and users, this is the biggie: There is a certain hard core of SGML/XML people who just 'grok' the XSLT development style and can use if to great advantage. But there are a lot of people (and I count myself among them, to my shame) that just can't get anything non-trivial done in XSLT without an example to work from and a reference manual in hand. Many of those same people can grok the basics of XQuery pretty quickly ("oh, it's a lot like SQL except ...."). My rough estimate from talking to XML users (as opposed to geeks) over the years is that SQL/XQuery grokkers outnumber XSLT grokkers by something like 10:1. Does that mean that anyone -- W3C, the big companies, whoever -- intends to deprecate XSLT? Definitely not, because there is no central authority in W3C (or Microsoft/IBM/Oracle, AFAIK) who knows or cares enough about this issue to have made such a decision, especially considering that different constituencies within them have different opinions. Everyone is trading off the needs of their users, the capacities of their developers, and the availability of alternatives, and these calculations give different results over time. For example, SQL-XML is starting to get some reality behind it, and that might well tilt some thinking toward a strategy of "XSLT for the people who grok it, SQL-XML for people who don't." I don't know. Another factor is likely to be whether the XQuery/XSLT2 specs become Recommendations in short order. I think patience is wearing thin; even those who might have planned 5 years ago for XQuery to replace XSLT as their preferred solution are likely to reconsider if the spec doesn't start moving more rapidly toward completion and real industry acceptance. [Obligatory disclaimer: I'm only reading tea leaves here, I don't have any inside information about this from anyone] Anyway, I would like hear from people who have strong feelings about whether XSLT meets their needs and XQuery doesn't or vice versa, whether SQL-XML will eventually eat XQuery's lunch in database scenarios, and what people plan do with XQuery *besides" use it as a database query language.
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