[XSL-LIST Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XPath "//", speed, and Saxon
On Mon, Nov 03 2008 12:55:12 +0000, mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: >> A lot of time, effort and money goes into testing, but for >> XSLT, I think that effort would be better spent on fully >> schema aware transforms than unit testing. What do you think? > > I think a lot of stylesheets go into production after testing with a very > small sample of input documents. It's often too expensive to do anything I concur. > else. In this situation, developing with schema awareness can greatly > increase your confidence that the stylesheet will also be able to handle > input documents that vary significantly from your initial sample. Up to a point. If you neglect to handle an optional input element or attribute or you map the wrong input to a valid output element or attribute, then having a schema isn't going to help much. An up-front good mapping from input to output still trumps the combination of a schema-aware processor and designing at the keyboard. (And, yes, a schema-aware processor and some planning could trump both.) A schema is a useful guide for what to expect, and having input that is schema-valid means that you don't have to prepare (as much) to handle unexpected input. In some ways, the old-fashioned 'match="*"' template rule that emits a message or outputs the element name in red for any element that isn't handled elsewhere is still useful even when you have schema awareness. Schema awareness awareness is useful too: I have met the approach that the schema is really only useful for working out what to put in "match" attributes. (That person was using XSLTC translets, so couldn't have done much with the schema even if he'd wanted to.) Something like XSLV for verifying that valid input produces valid output or a coverage tool (non-existent, AFAIK) that tells you whether your stylesheet can handle everything in a schema would also still be useful. Regards, Tony Graham Tony.Graham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Director W3C XSL FO SG Invited Expert Menteith Consulting Ltd XML, XSL and XSLT consulting, programming and training Registered Office: 13 Kelly's Bay Beach, Skerries, Co. Dublin, Ireland Registered in Ireland - No. 428599 http://www.menteithconsulting.com -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- xmlroff XSL Formatter http://xmlroff.org xslide Emacs mode http://www.menteith.com/wiki/xslide Unicode: A Primer urn:isbn:0-7645-4625-2
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