Re: Balisage Bard: On performance, persistence, and p

parent pointers: rather have them and not need them, than need them
and not have them... but either way, the optimizer better know my
'haves' from my 'needs' :)

On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 4:38 PM Damian Morris damian@xxxxxxxxxxx
<xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> This is fabulous, Michael :)
>
>
>
> On 31 Jul 2020, at 4:24 am, Michael Kay mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> For those who weren't there, and those who were and can bear hearing it again, here's my contribution to the famous Balisage Bard session.
>
> It's an abridged version of my XML Prague 2018 paper, and describes work done during the development of the XSLT compiler now released as part of Saxon-JS 2.
>
> On performance, persistence, and pointers to parents
>
> We wrote a compiler for XSLT
> Like any compiler, its heart is a tree.
> In each of its phases it transforms this tree
> And the transforms are written in XSLT.
>
> If the input and output compare line by line,
> Then an XSL transform takes linear time.
> Though the changes you make may be local and small
> You still pay the price of transforming it all.
>
> The reason it's costly is easy to see:
> The non-changing content itself is a tree.
> Not only do nodes point to children, to boot,
> They also link up to the document root.
> When subtrees are used in a new destination,
> These pointers are switched to a brand new location.
> The larger the corpus, the longer it takes;
> Work needed just for consistency's sake.
>
> In a functional programming language like Scheme,
> You don't have this problem: it works like a dream.
> With immutable structures like binary trees,
> Making many small changes is fast as the breeze.
> It works much more quickly because it's arranged
> So you only touch branches whose content has changed.
>
> That's why JSON works so well:
> With JSON trees (I have to tell),
> Parent pointers are not needed:
> Copy speed is not impeded.
>
> But the pointers to parents are there for a purpose,
> It cannot be said that their presence is worthless.
> The freedom to navigate upwards and down
> Means the rules for transforming each fragment of prose
> Can depend on its context (whence it arose).
> So if xml:lang says your paragraph's Dutch,
> This may affect formats for numbers and such,
> But to know just what language applies at your focus,
> You need to go up to establish its locus.
>
> The point of this poem is perfectly plain,
> So let's wrap it up and repeat it again:
> Decisions you make when designing your data
> Determine the speed of all that comes later.
> While pointers to parents have justification,
> They stultify subsequent optimization.
>
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