RE: XPath "//", speed, and Saxon

> Out of interest, how does it work with the following:
> 
> /descendant::*[@foo = 'bar']

That's going to take substantially longer than /descendant::foo. How much
longer, I don't know.
> 
> Also, what happens with regard to wildcards in template matches:
> 
> <xsl:template match="*[@foo = 'bar']">
> 
> <xsl:template match="*[@foo = 'something else']

In Saxon, template rules whose match pattern identifies an explicit element
name will always be significantly more efficient than those that don't. (A
really bad case with Saxon is to write a stylesheet with 1000 template rules
all of the form match="*[..some predicate..]")

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