Hi Patrick --
I like the idea of XSLT/XML, though I find myself trying to read between the lines of hype vs. something that's actually very useful. I don't know, so I don't have any opinions. I do know I'd like to use XSLT/XML so as to have a project to use it for, hence learn it.
It's mostly hype in my experience. And not even very useful hype, like Java or PHP, which are actually real things which people might want to use.
I don't quite understand what isn't "real" about XML or XSLT. XML really is a way to structure your data, XSLT really is a way to transform that structured data.
But unless you just happen to have thousands of
XML documents sitting around on your hard drive, XSLT is a solution in
search of a problem. Most of my data is in a RDBMS -- not XML.
Or, if you have thousands of XML documents sitting around on your hard drive, XSLT is an efficient way to translate them into XHTML and deliver them to a browser.
You do make a good point that XSLT probably isn't for folks who store the all data they are delivering in a RDBMS. Adding layers onto your RDBMS to make it return XML, and then transforming that newly generated XML using XSLT may not be the best solution.
But if folks are storing indexed XML documents on their filesystem (a la XML::Comma or a similar framework) XSLT can be quite handy.
Too cynical? Maybe. The fact that XSLT is still discussed in serious company just bugs me. ;-)
Well, I've always considered myself to be pretty light-hearted. Sometimes bordering on straight goofy ;-)
TTYL,
-Jesse-
-- Douglas
