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Re: 3 Sins of XML Usage

• From: Jim Melton <jim.melton@oracle.com>
• To: Norman Gray <norman@astro.gla.ac.uk>
• Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 07:43:52 -0600

Norman, et al,

In fact, XPath has been incorporated into several other "host" 
languages, the most obvious of which is XQuery.  (Actually, XPath is 
a subset of XQuery.)

XSLT and XQuery have very different paradigms. XSLT is, in my way of 
looking at it, "data driven", while XQuery is "logic driven".  Other 
than that, they do rather similar jobs: [expletive deleted] in XML and emitting 
XML, HMTL, and plain text (or, without a serializer, XDM -- 
XPath/XQuery/XSLT Data Model -- instances). If one language (e.g., 
XSLT) isn't right for your job or for your preferences, then XQuery 
is certainly worth considering for processing XML data.

Hope this helps,
    Jim

At 10/26/2012 03:19 AM, Norman Gray wrote:

>Roger, hello.
>
>On 25 Oct 2012, at 17:46, "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
>
> > Sin #1: Using Java to Process XML
>
>This seems such an eccentric proposition that I think I must be 
>misunderstanding you.
>
>If by 'process XML' you mean 'turning XML into other XML in what is 
>basically a reformatting job' then yes, XSLT would obviously be top 
>of the list of candidate technologies.  But it depends what has to 
>happen to the information during its processing.
>
>It's not as if processing XML with Java (to pick your example 
>application language, which is far from being my favourite) is 
>particularly nasty.  You [expletive deleted] the XML in with SAX (implementing a 
>~10-function interface to do so), do your magic, and serialise the 
>result.  If the serialisation target is XML, that ends up being the 
>most annoying part of the process in my experience.
>
>XSLT is an attractive language in many ways, but it's sufficiently 
>syntactically nasty that I always end up grinding my teeth if I 
>write more than a relatively small amount of it.  One can over-sell 
>the case for XSLT.
>
>And I know that XPath is a distinct language, but (possibly my 
>ignorance) I'm not aware of many opportunities to use that outside 
>the context of XSLT.
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Norman
>
>
>--
>Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
>SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK

========================================================================
Jim Melton --- Editor of ISO/IEC 9075-* (SQL)     Phone: +1.801.942.0144
   Chair, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC32 and W3C XML Query WG    Fax : +1.801.942.3345
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=  Facts are facts.   But any opinions expressed are the opinions      =
=  only of myself and may or may not reflect the opinions of anybody   =
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• References:
  • 3 Sins of XML Usage
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
  • Re: 3 Sins of XML Usage
    • From: Norman Gray <norman@astro.gla.ac.uk>