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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Re: XML As Fall Guy
 On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 10:34 PM, John Cowan <johnwcowan@gmail.com> wrote:
The end client had bought Altova MapForce . Mapforce describes itself as a Graphical Data Mapping gives you an interface for generating transformations much like the Query By Example interface to MS Access but underneath the XSLT code it generates is spaghetti procedural. I was placed on to the project by the consultant firm they had hired. The first thing the client did was to ask me to fix the performance of a slow running transformation. I looked under the hood and found that MapForce translates lookups into code that calls the document function (and therefore does file I/O) EVERY TIME something is looked up. The performance fix is to cache the looked up file with xsl:key, but xsl:key is not part of the subset of XSLT code that Mapforce generates (checked this with the vendor). So I told the client I would have to hand code that particular transform and was told by the team lead that everything had to be done with MapForce. When I said that was the only way to fix the performance of that transform I was told "Can't you see we are mitigating risk this way". It was a philosophy the whole team had bought into - I spoke about it to another team member and he said "It's the 80/20" rule. We can get 80% of the transformations we need this way" I asked him how they were going to finish 100% of the project and he started looking intently at the screen. Mapforce also generates C++, C# and Java - since the whole team is convinced that XSLT development is a risk, why choose the option that generates spaghetti procedural XSLT? In the MapForce/QBE analogy, XML schemas play the role of relational tables. So by choosing this path they had traded their fear of transformation code for an obligation to write/provide XML schemas. MapForce have a tool that auto generates schemas from an instance. Oh goody. All Mapforce users have to do now is figure out how to construct a super instance that encapsulates 100% of the use cases for the relevant content model(s) and they are golden. For the rates * the number of consultants they had brought to pursue this methodology they could have had a proper team 
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