RE: quick xpath question - using variable as attribute

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Subject: RE: quick xpath question - using variable as attribute valu e?
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2003 12:21:40 -0400

Kathy,

You aren't bothering the list with your stupidity. You are confused about two or three things -- confusing things -- which is leading you to make some ... "elementary" mistakes. But nothing irremediable.

My suspicion is that you're trying to apply the technology within a complex layered system -- ASP and all that -- without having had a chance to break your system down and learn the different parts separately.

For example, several mistakes you have come to us with have been in the area of XML well-formedness rules. Why this works:

<xsl:apply-templates select="element[@att='value']"/>

but this gives you an error:

<xsl:apply-templates select="element[@att="value"]"/>

This isn't an XSLT error -- it's an XML error. But if you've never used XML before (XSLT aside), you don't know it and you don't know the error, etc. Yet to an experienced user of XML (who's used it in different contexts, including without XSLT, ASP etc. etc.), it's grade-school stuff.

At 11:00 AM 7/1/2003, you wrote:

Please tell me where in your book (or any book!) it gives explanations or
examples of how to actually APPLY this stuff as PART of a program.

There are a couple of books that have one-chapter explanations of "systems" soup-to -nuts, such as Wrox's "XML Applications" or "ASP XML". But these frequently miss the mark, simply because people's design requirements are just so various that it's often difficult to apply what they show to your case. There is *one* set of well-formedness rules to XML, a single spec of the XSLT language -- but many, many architectures that include them.

It's probably just as effective -- and in the long run, it'll keep you sane -- to learn how the various different technologies work separately, and only then see how people (and applications) are putting them together.

This doesn't require an expensive training course -- the knowledge is all out there. But it does require time and patience ... particularly patience with old schoolmasters who are frustrated that you weren't born knowing the rules of Latin noun declension.

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
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  Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
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XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

Current Thread
RE: quick xpath question - using variable as attributevalu e? Kathy Burke - Tue, 1 Jul 2003 11:00:41 -0400 (EDT) David Carlisle - Tue, 1 Jul 2003 11:25:12 -0400 (EDT) Wendell Piez - Tue, 1 Jul 2003 12:26:55 -0400 (EDT) <= Michael Kay - Tue, 1 Jul 2003 17:32:03 -0400 (EDT)

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