At 12:30 PM 5/13/2004, Oleg wrote:
By the way, here is more detailed explanation - "Why You Won't See XSLT
2.0 or XPath 2.0 in the Next Version of the .NET Framework" by Dare
Obasanjo, http://blogs.msdn.com/dareobasanjo/archive/2004/05/13/131166.aspx
This is strange. Its author is no dummy (as numerous other writings
demonstrate), but his claim that XPath 2.0 (as opposed to XQuery) is weakly
typed controverts every other description of it including its own (see
XPath 2.0 WD of 12 November 2003, section 2.4: "XPath is a strongly typed
language with a type system based on XML Schema..."). And then the argument:
In the decision to go with XQuery over XSLT 2.0, Mark is right that we
felt that developers would prefer the familiar procedural model and syntax
of XQuery to the template based model and syntax of XSLT 2.0. Most
developers working with XSLT try to use it as a procedural language
anyway, and don't really harness the power of templates. There's always
the steep learning curve until you get to the "Aha" moment and everything
clicks. XQuery with its
<http://www.w3schools.com/xquery/xquery_flwor.asp>FLWOR construct and user
defined functions fits more naturally with how both programmers and
database administrators access and manipulate data than does XSLT 2.0.
Thus we feel XQuery and not XSLT is the future of XML based query and
transformation.
This seems to me not unlike Black & Decker saying "in our observation,
carpenters have a hard time learning to use power tools, and can't use them
well until they do learn, so we believe the future of carpentry is in hand
tools". Maybe: but it may not be a good bet on the marketplace if thousands
of carpenters worldwide are already using power tools quite happily to do
things that are impossible or prohibitively difficult to do by hand. (It's
also noteworthy that the author lumps "query and transformation" together
as one thing.)
Who knows: maybe they can make us forget that we could ever do document
processing with XSLT. Must repeat: "Data is for databases. Documents are
for Word." :->
Cheers,
Wendell
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Wendell Piez
mailto:wapiez(_at_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285
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