From: Evan Lenz (elenz@xyzfind.com)
Date: Tue Dec 11 2001 - 07:00:17 CET
Leigh Dodds wrote:
> To guide things
> back to the main theme, I'm seeing interest in both the definition of
> a top-level param (x:input) AND some (probably non-normative)
> discussion of different processing models on how that parameter
> gets populated.
Yes, I think this is a fair characterization of what we're looking at so
far. And there's nothing prohibiting us, I think, from including
non-normative sections in a TransQuery spec. The appendices might end up
being longer than the normative body, but I don't think that would break any
state or federal laws.
> As an aside, it occured to me that one could re-write any stylesheet
> that uses the document() function to use x:input, so long as the
> XSLT processor exposes those documents in the input collection.
>
> I'm not sure whether there's any value in this, other than factoring
> out the location of the documents from the processing stylesheet?
>
> But this would necessitate being able to define (externally) that
> a particular stylesheet required a particular collection of documents.
> Might be useful if one wanted to re-use the same stylesheet to process
> data from different sources. E.g. several different URL addressable
> data sources that may vary in their interfaces (if only by domain name),
> but respond with the same XML format.
I think that, in the end, these mechanisms (document() and tq:input) are
complementary. The scenario you describe of applying the same stylesheet or
"query" to multiple collections lends itself to use of the TransQuery input
parameter. In other cases where document() is used to access a single
URI-addressable document, the TransQuery input parameter might not make as
much sense.
You're right to point out that the two methods are functionally equivalent,
although tq:input alone is arguably more limited, since you have less
granular control over which documents you access in a given part of the
stylesheet. Another reason why they're complementary.
Evan
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