RE: Behavior of document() Function with Empty String

> My project involves a Java web application and a Java 5.0 
> application that share the same directory structure.  
> Unfortunately, the parser in the web application interprets 
> the document() function differently than the parser in the 
> standalone application.  I suppose the base paths are different.
> Unfortunately, in neither case does document('') refer to the 
> stylesheet that makes the call.
> 
> I can't figure out how to work around this problem without 
> hardcoding absolute paths or having two sets of stylesheets 
> with different relative paths.

The best answer is not to use document('') at all. There's really no good
reason to use it. Put the data that you want to use at run-time in a
separate lookup.xml file, and load that from your stylesheet instead. You'll
still have to solve the problem of how to address it in a way that works in
different configurations, but that problem should be soluble, e.g. by using
a URIResolver if there's no other way.

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