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Re: [xsl] XSLT Dead?

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On 4/16/07, Karl Stubsjoen <kstubs@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> >So, is XSLT dead?
>
> What do you mean by "dead"?  That no developer will use it or that no
> supplier will make XSLT available?  Or something else?

Dead, as in there are better technologies to explore, like off the
shelf solutions, a custom calendar control for example.

Its testament to XSLT that its used everywhere.  At the place which
pays me each month, we use it at the point data comes into the company
- as one large XML file, or millions of small files or from web
service calls etc. throughout the processing pipeline to
combine/extract/shape the data, and then at the UI level to present
the data for different media formats and customers.

We also use it extensively for analyzing the XML and generating
reports - finding broken references, finding link text and target
titles that don't match, or satisfying ad-hoc requests information
like "articles that occur more than 5 times in the index".  Its all
straightforward with XSLT.

My gripe with people that make comments like "XSLT is dead" are likely
to be the same people that say "oh yeah I know XSLT" when all they
know are xsl:value-of and xsl:for-each (but call it the "for loop")
and have created a HTML file on a one-day course.  Its really
annoying.  In my experience they're usually proficient Java bods, and
so think XSLT is trivial.  I always ask them to explain the difference
between xsl:for-each and xsl:apply-templates...

XSLT will not die because of AJAX, because its so much more than a UI
level language, and only someone with a limited experience would
suggest otherwise.

cheers
andrew

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