RE: [xsl] generating a repeatable unique id

["Michael Kay" <mhkay at iclway dot co dot uk>]

> Ouch! Looks like I've got the wrong end of yet another stick. I know
> that different XSLT processors aren't obliged (or even
> likely) to return
> the same value for generate-id called on a given node, but is
> it in fact
> permissible for the same processor to return a different generated id
> for the same node on different runs?

Yes, it's certainly allowed.

Saxon's generated ID is in two parts, document number and node-number within
document.
Releases of Saxon before 6.4 produced a document number that represented the
number of documents loaded since the Saxon software was loaded. More recent
releases use a document number that represents the number of documents
instantiated using one transformation. So it's more repeatable now than it
used to be, but there's still no guarantee of repeatability and you
shouldn't rely on it.

Mike Kay
Software AG


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list