RE: [XSLT 2.x] XSLT support for document collections

Thanks for the comment. The closing date for comments on the current last
call draft of XSLT 2.0 has passed, and although we are still keen to recieve
reports of errors and ambiguities, the working group is no longer
considering requests for new functionality to go in this release of the
specification.

The collection() function in the XPath 2.0 functions and operators
specification may go some way towards meeting your requirement, though it
depends how it is implemented. In fact, the scalability problem with the
document() function could be resolved by an implementation if it chooses to
provide a more intelligent cache - I believe most current implementations
keep all loaded documents in memory for the duration of a transformation,
but other designs are possible. So it might be that you should be canvassing
vendors for an improved implementation, rather than looking for changes to
the language specification.

It is possible in XSLT 2.0 to search across multiple documents by doing

$docset/key('k', $value)

but it is again up to the implementation whether it implements this using a
multi-document index, or using a serial search of all the relevant
single-document indexes.

Regards,

Michael Kay 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-qt-comments-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-qt-comments-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Paul Rabin
> Sent: 01 July 2004 18:47
> To: public-qt-comments@w3.org
> Subject: [XSLT 2.x] XSLT support for document collections
> 
> 
> Dear XSLT WG,
> 
> Please consider adding support for document collections in 
> the requirements 
> list for a future revision of the XSLT specification.  The 
> support provided 
> by the document() function in XSLT 2.0 requires materialization of a 
> sequence of document URL's, and thus scales poorly.  As part of this 
> support, it would be useful to be able to define a key to be 
> scoped to a 
> collection rather than a single document.
> 
> 	Sincerely yours,
> 
> 	Paul Rabin
> 	Sonic Software
> 
>

Received on Saturday, 10 July 2004 05:03:20 UTC