As for the type: I asked a similar question a while back and the general consensus was to not give it a type, as to be explicit and give it a type of document-node() was long-hand for not giving it a type.

From: "andrew welch" <andrew.j.welch@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  Assigning types to variables
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 16:05:22 +0100

On 9/13/06, tom tom <tomxsllist@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi all, if I have declared the following variable:

<xsl:variable name="test" as="element()">
        <one>
            <two>hello</two>
        </one>
</xsl:variable>

I don't understand why <xsl:sequence select="$test/two"/> retrieves the
value of <two/> while <xsl:sequence select="$test/one/two"/> does not. If I
omit the 'as' attribute it works the other way round. What exactly is
happening when I assign a node() or element() or whatever type to this
variable?

Also could you advise what type I should be using for this kind of task?

It's because you want the variable to be an element, so the variable
$test becomes <one>, so $test/two is the same as one/two, which is why
you get the output you see.

As for the type: I asked a similar question a while back and the
general consensus was to not give it a type, as to be explicit and
give it a type of document-node() was long-hand for not giving it a
type.

I guess my problem is that I'm thinking about variables in XSLT 1 terms!

This is still a grey area for me - the general advice is to give
everything a type, except in this case, it seems.