learning XML? (was RE: [thelist] Marking up chapter.verse (or chapter.section))
Steve Lewis
nepolon at worlddomination.net
Mon Dec 15 14:52:01 CST 2003
Joel D Canfield wrote:
>I have MS's 'Developing XML Solutions' which seems clear enough. The
>concept that took me a while was that the XML itself is more of a data
>repository, kinda like a database. You don't use XML to display the
>data, for that you use XSLT (see http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/)
>
>
Actually you use XSLT to translate source XML into another form of
data. The data in that other form may be read by another application
that reads that language, but it doesn't have to be. This is subtle,
but perhaps there is some value in this distinction.
The trick to this is really that the XSLT translates from one language
to another. The two languages do not need to resemble each other, and
the output format does not need to be even losely based on XML. You
could translate from XML to CSV (comma delimited text file, frequently
used for import into Excell for instance) or XML to SQL even, for insert
into a relational database. You can even translate from XML to XML, to
add "default values" to missing attributes in the source XML or change
the document structure. There is nothing about XSLT that requires you
to be headed toward presentation. The most common use may be to
transform from XML to either HTML / XHTML but don't let this hold you back.
Steve
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