Date variable ?!

Hello

I have a simple XML document wit lots of elements : "testCase"
every "testCase" has an attribute such as      startedOn="26.11.2003
11:41:30"
In my xslt programm, I would like to extract the earliest startedOn
attribute among all the testCase elements.
That means, look through all the values of the attribute and find a way tget
the earliest date.
(if it is too complicated with the Time, we can only focus on the date)

If you have any idea, I thank you in advance.
  

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