I'm just formulating theme for my PhD thesis. Finally I decided that
"Implementing XSLT 2.0 in .NET" will be an interesting one. As am I
thinking about this topic, there are several ways to go:
1. Automatically translate Java code of Saxon to C# (this is
the way you propose)
2. On-the-fly translation of XSLT 2.0 stylesheet into XSLT
1.0 + EXSLT +
scripts
3. Write own XSLT 2.0 engine on the top of XQuery/XPath
engine in .NET
Framework 2.0
4. Write whole XSLT 2.0 engine from scratch
- as interpreter
- as preprocesor which generates C# code
- as direct MSIL code (.NET byte-code) generator
My reaction:
(1) is not innovative enough to qualify for a PhD project (but of course,
it's not for me to judge what the criteria are at your institution)
(2) translating XSLT 2.0 into 1.0 sounds very difficult to do, because of
the differences in the data model and type system.
(3) would be a very interesting project. XQuery uses the same data model and
type system as XSLT 2.0, and has a subset of the functionality, so compiling
an XSLT 2.0 stylesheet into an equivalent XQuery sounds both feasible and
sufficiently challenging.
(4) is probably too big as a typical PhD project, especially as you will
have to do something innovative along the way, e.g. exploring optimisation
techniques.
Michael Kay