Identifying sets of child elements that meet a certain

Hi Everyone,

In the following XML document, I'm trying to identify the component
nodes that do not contain an attribute with the name "a." In the
example, the only component that meets this criterion is "3."

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data>
    <component name="1">
        <attributeList>
            <attribute name="a"/>
             <attribute name="b"/>
            <attribute name="c"/>
        </attributeList>
    </component>
    <component name="2">
        <attributeList>
             <attribute name="a"/>
            <attribute name="e"/>
            <attribute name="f"/>
        </attributeList>
    </component>
    <component name="3">
         <attributeList>
            <attribute name="g"/>
            <attribute name="h"/>
            <attribute name="i"/>
        </attributeList>
     </component>
</data>

I thought I could construct this transformation using a variable and
have read the articles on variables on the list FAQ. But the variables
I've constructed either identify any component node that contains AT
LEAST ONE attribute that is not "a" (in other words, the entire list
of components) rather than those components that do not contain ANY
instance of "a" (component 3). Or, they identify no components at all.

Here's one example:

    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:variable name="attributename" select="//data/component
/attributeList/attribute"/>
            <topic>
                   <ul>
                        <xsl:for-each select="$attributename[@name!='a']">
                            <xsl:sort select="@name"/>
                            <xsl:choose>
                                 <xsl:when test="public='N'"/>
                                <xsl:otherwise>
                                    <li>
                                        <xsl:value-of select="../../../@name"/>
                                     </li>
                                </xsl:otherwise>
                            </xsl:choose>
                        </xsl:for-each>
                    </ul>
             </topic>
        </topic>
    </xsl:template>


The result I'm trying for is as follows:


<topic>
      <ul>
           <li>3</li>
      </ul>
</topic>

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks,
Mark

-- 

Mark Peters
Senior Technical Writer
 Saba Software