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Re: XSLT & SQL


> What I was trying to express is the distinction between the XSLT processor
> as a "machine" and the XSLT document as "raw material". In the SQL world
> the data and the SQL engine are intimately bound. By this I mean that
> you couldn't expect to use MS SQL Server to process SQL queries against
> a set Oracle database files without several intervening helper mechanisms.
> 
> XML/XSLT, on the other hand, are uncoupled from any particular processor.
> You could use Saxon, Xalan, MSXML, Oracle or any number of other processors
> against the same set of data and stylesheet files and should get the
> same results in each case.

Yes but the situation is really the same in XSLT.
The XSLT spec does not give any indication on how the input tree comes
in to being or is bound to the XSLT process.
If you have a microsoft DOM you can call a method of that DOM and cause
a transformation to happen. You can't easily give that DOM to a
different XSLT engine.

What you can do is lineraise that DOM to XML and re-parse it with a
different XML parser and stuff the result to a different XSLT engine.

The fact that XML has a common portable character based linearisation is
of course the whole point of XML, but it is no different conceptually
from outputting your database in some linearised form, re-entering it
into some other database engine and executing the SQL on that.

Of course practically speaking the XML case is a lot easier, which
is why XML is interesting. Making documents portable. But this thread
left practical issues behind a long time ago, didn't it:-)

David


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