RE: which is faster?

> I have a template which does a lookup from an exernal file.
> Currently I am
> doing it like so.

That all looks fine, one area you could see some improvement though is
that for each iteration (of the first ten <malwareFamily> elements) you
do:

<xsl:variable name="month"
  select="document('/global/autodate.xml')/date/month[@position =
$month_position]/@name"/>

Which would be much faster if you used a key:

<xsl:variable name="autodate"
select="document('/global/autodate.xml')"/>
<xsl:key name="autodate_month" match="month" use="@position"/>

With in XSLT 1.0:

<xsl:for-each select="$autodate">
  <xsl:value-of select="key('autodate_month', $month_position)/@name"/>
</xsl:for-each>

Or in XSLT 2.0:

<xsl:value-of select="key('autodate_month', $month_position,
$autodate)/@name"/>


cheers
andrew


> <!-------------
> <xsl:template name="displayPrevalenceReport">
>   <xsl:param name="malwareFamilyId"/>
>   <xsl:param name="items" select="10"/>
>   <xsl:param name="method" select="'normal'"/>
>
>   <!-- load in required indexes -->
>   <xsl:variable name="malwarePrevalence"
>
> select="document('/malwareDirectory/prevalence/index.xml')/mal
> warePrevalence"/>
>
>   <!-- do the rows -->
>   <xsl:for-each select="$malwarePrevalence/malwareFamily[@id =
> $malwareFamilyId]/entry">
>     <xsl:sort order="descending" select="@date"/>
>     <xsl:if test="position() &lt;= $items">
>       <xsl:variable name="year" select="substring(@date, 1, 4)"/>
>       <xsl:variable name="month_position" select="substring(@date, 5,
> 6)"/>
>       <xsl:variable name="month"
> select="document('/global/autodate.xml')/date/month[@position =
> $month_position]/@name"/>
>
>       <xsl:value-of select="concat($month, ' ', $year)"/>
>
>       <img src="/images/bgraph.gif" height="15" align="center"
> style="border:0px; padding:0px; margin:0px;"/>
>
>       <img src="/images/ggraph.gif" height="15" align="center"
> style="border:0px; padding:0px; margin:0px;"
> width="{ceiling(@percentage)
> * 0.95}%"/>
>
>       <img src="/images/bgraph.gif" height="15" align="center"
> style="border:0px; padding:0px; margin:0px;"/>
>
>       <xsl:value-of select="@percentage"/>% <br/>
>
>       <xsl:value-of select="@instances"/> instances <br />
>
>     </xsl:if>
>   </xsl:for-each>
> </xsl:template>
> <!-------------
>
> The external file looks a bit like this (although it actually
> contains
> about 12000 lines of code and is about 600k on disk):
>
> <!-------------
> <?xml version="1.0"?>
> <malwarePrevalence>
>   <malwareFamily id="1099">
>     <entry date="199504" instances="1" percentage="0.9"/>
>   </malwareFamily>
>   <malwareFamily id="10_Past_3.748">
>     <entry date="199808" instances="1" percentage="0.5"/>
>   </malwareFamily>
>   <malwareFamily id="2K-674">
>     <entry date="199602" instances="1" percentage="0.3"/>
>   </malwareFamily>
>   <malwareFamily id="2lines">
>     <entry date="199705" instances="1" percentage="0.3"/>
>   </malwareFamily>
>   <malwareFamily id="A&amp;A.506">
>     <entry date="199611" instances="1" percentage="0.1"/>
>   </malwareFamily>
>   <malwareFamily id="ABC">
>     <entry date="199712" instances="1" percentage="0.2"/>
>     <entry date="199801" instances="2" percentage="0.4"/>
>     <entry date="199802" instances="1" percentage="0.2"/>
>     <entry date="199803" instances="2" percentage="0.5"/>
>     <entry date="199805" instances="2" percentage="0.5"/>
>   </malwareFamily>
>   <malwareFamily id="Angelina">
>     <entry date="199709" instances="2" percentage="0.7"/>
>     <entry date="199802" instances="7" percentage="1.6"/>
>     <entry date="199804" instances="4" percentage="1.0"/>
>     <entry date="199805" instances="2" percentage="0.5"/>
>     <entry date="199806" instances="1" percentage="0.2"/>
>     <entry date="199808" instances="5" percentage="2.4"/>
>     <entry date="199809" instances="2" percentage="0.9"/>
>     <entry date="199810" instances="1" percentage="0.2"/>
>     <entry date="199811" instances="2" percentage="0.5"/>
>     <entry date="199903" instances="23" percentage="0.4"/>
>     <entry date="199908" instances="1" percentage="0.05"/>
>     <entry date="199910" instances="1" percentage="0.05"/>
>   </malwareFamily>
> </malwarePrevalence>
> <!-------------
>
> So as you can see, first I load the external file into a
> variable for easy
> access, then I do a for-each loop on the specific parts of
> the file I want
> to proecss. What I want to know is if I am going about this
> in a decent
> manor, or if I am making the computer do unnessecary work.
>
> The problem (if there is one) probably lays with the call to
> the external
> file. Perhaps I should be using keys somehow to speed it all up? Or
> perhaps I should load only the parts of that external file into this
> stylesheet rather than the entire document. Or seing as I
> only want to
> process the first 10 elements, is there a way to load only
> those ones into
> the stylesheet?
>
>
> Many thanks to anyone who can give me some pointers.
>
> --
> Tom David Kirkpatrick
> Virus Bulletin Web Developer, Virus Bulletin
>
> Tel: +44 1235 555139
> Web: www.virusbtn.com