RE: rephrased: passing parameters to generic templates

> In this example there are many <a>'s to one <docBase>, so traversing
> ancestor each time to retrieve the same value seems like a waste - if
> there are 3 <a>'s, that means 3 trips up the same ancestor axis to get
> the same value (I guess it probably gets optimized, but why rely on
> that?) much better to store the value in a tunnelled parameter.

I wouldn't want to place a bet on which approach will be faster, but I
rather doubt the difference would be significant.

In earlier Saxon releases navigating the ancestor axis could be slow in
trees with a very wide fan-out, but that problem was solved a while ago. 

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/