RE: the future of xslt

On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 12:06 PM, James Fuller
<james.fuller.2007@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Do any of these trends indicate anything with respect to peaking XSLT
> adoption ?  ... considering these numbers I wonder if XSLT 2.0
> adoption will be a very slow burn ?

These graphs are interesting, but one of the reasons why its difficult
to draw conclusions from search trends on their own is the variety of
keywords (such as 'XSL', 'XSLT 2.0' or 'XML Stylesheet') that may be
used in a search . For a different perspective I've prepared another
graph at:

http://pgfearo.googlepages.com/xpathtoolwebsitestatistics

This graph very roughly shows the trend for nearly a year in downloads
for one of the many free XPath Tools available available on the web .

The majority of users of this tool are, I believe, XSLT developers.
This should therefore provide a crude but potentially useful barometer
(when combined with other data) for looking at XSLT trends.

Though I'm reluctant to draw too many conclusions from this graph (and
associated details such as companies and organisations downloading the
product) the main points of interest are:

1. The trend in the number of downloads is generally upwards
2. When the XPath tool was upgraded to support XPath 2.0 there was a
slight surge that has now evaporated
3. The initial launch of the XPath 1.0 tool received valuable links
from blogs (mostly from the .NET community and none from the Java
community)
4. The refresh of this tool for XPath 2.0 was met by silence from the
entire XML blogging community
5. The number of searches for 'XPath 2.0 Tool' is less than 0.1
percent of those for 'XPath Tool'

My own conclusion therefore is that XSLT 2.0 usage may well still be
rising, but not as fast as XSLT 1.0.


Phil Fearon