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Re: [xsl] Good app to apply transformations automatically?

2006-07-11 09:34:36
Chad,

My $0.02 -- Georges is right: there are a million ways to do it. The problem isn't so much how, as it is what's the best solution given your user's level of technical ability *plus* the maintenance requirements going forward.

For example, on Windows an old-fashioned DOS batch file could invoke Saxon on an entire directory -- this wouldn't be incremental (that is, all files would be transformed, not just new ones), but it would work with a double-click on the desktop or a shortcut from the Start menu. That's about as low-grade as you can get. Going up from there, there are many better ways to do it (some of which Georges has mentioned), but all of which require installation and maintenance overhead (when the system setup changes, or a migration happens, or requirements change).

In my experience it's best if even the most naive and innocent users know something about what's going on ... so my choice would very much depend on who's on the ground and what they're most comfortable with.

If you're willing and able to maintain a Java installation, Ant isn't a bad choice: simple for simple stuff, but fairly capable of complex stuff. I've got a routine in Ant which invokes a tranform to derive a list of graphics files in an XML instance to be copied, and then invokes Ant from itself to copy them....

On the other hand, the best of all would be if you can encourage someone there to learn something about what's under the hood, in which case teaching them how to invoke Saxon from the command line, plus using something like Kernow, might work best.

Cheers,
Wendell

At 11:57 AM 7/11/2006, you wrote:
Chad Chelius wrote:

  Hi

> My apologies to all for not being more specific here. I have written
> an XSLT that is a solution for a customer. That customer now needs an
> easy way to apply transformations to XML files that they are
> obtaining as output from another program.

  The responses you got in this thread apply, IMHO.  For example
Kernow, creating a little XSLT script with Saxon extensions that apply
itself the transformations, a more "portable" script using
collection(), a shell script, a custom application (for example using
Saxon in Java, or gexslt in Eiffel, or libxslt in C, ...), etcetera.

  Why none of these is right for you?

  Regards,

--drkm
































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