Passin, Tom wrote:
[me(_at_)robrohan(_dot_)com]
Mitch Amiano wrote:
snip
using XML, and used XSLT templates to pump out C++.
Anyone else have experience long-term
applying a similar approach?
I have used XML + XSLT = SQL on several projects to
allow for webservice type database control. Works well.
I have used xslt to create SQL DDL for creating database tables to hold
data from HTML forms, where the form itself was created from an XML file
using xslt. The same XML templates that were transformed (with xslt)
into the form served as the source for the DDL.
We used to do this sort of thing with 4GL languages and Unix scripts (perl/awk/sed). So XML has completed the displacement of 4GL environments begun by HTML forms.
I like the idea that such a solution can be tailor fit to the local needs, and
despite this highly specialized customization and integration you *still* end
up with a production system implemented with understandable components and
standardized languages.
However, I've found it is still difficult to get developers to understand the
semantics - this being perhaps the most difficult part of transitioning and
getting such a tool adopted by others - and moreso if the XML encodes just a
characterization of the domain. If it attempts to be a programming language, it
seems to be easier to get programmers to adopt it, but conversely less useful
as a code factoring tool.
- Mitch
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