One thing I didn't say was that this problem is for BizTalk, where I
have no control over the XML being used.  In the end I discovered that
this was what I had to use:

count(/*[local-name()='HesaValidate_Response' and
namespace-uri()='http://HesaValidateSqlSend']/*[local-name()='row' and
namespace-uri()='http://HesaValidateSqlSend'])

Thanks for putting me on the right path by pointing out the fundamental
problem.  And I hope this might be useful to somebody else.

Cheers


Peter


-----Original Message-----
From: David Carlisle [mailto:davidc@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 08 December 2008 16:18
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  Counting records



//row

selects the the elements row in no namespace, which is 0.

You want the  elements row in the namespace
http://HesaValidateSqlSend

so that is

//h:row

where some ancestor element 9eg xsl:stylesheet0 has

xmlns:h="http://HesaValidateSqlSend"

In XPath1 you must always use a prefix to select a namespaced element.

You don't really want // eiether as it's rather expensive, it looks like
you want

/h:HesaValidate_Response/h:row

David

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