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xmlxsltarchitecturestandards-compliancejaxp

XML/XSLT/Xpath standards compliance

Our shop develops platform on which multiple core products and customer specific implementations are built. The platform has been around for 5 years and now we are trying to re-think/re-platform. As the platform owner, below are the few key principles I am planning to adhere to

  • Be as close as possible to the Java EE spec
  • Limit or eliminate dependencies on 3rd party libraries
  • Make the contracts explicit of the platform components and if possible make then as osgi compliant bundles
  • Be compliant to the standards (for non Java EE stuff)

So we depend lot on JAXP and XSLT for transformations. We had frequent issues with the XSLT style sheets when we were deploying on different vendor app servers and also different versions of the app server from same vendor. Most of the time the issues are

  1. Using parser-impl specific stuff in XSLT
  2. Bundles the parser implementations with-in the app
  3. Using XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0 with JAXP 1.3 etc etc

I need some help in below

  1. Where can I check the compliance of my XSLT's for 1.0 as JAXP 1.4 supports onlty XSLT 1.0 and Xpath 1.0?
  2. Is there a list of supported finctions etc for XSLT 1.0 (I am looking something similar to javadoc for XSLT and XPath
Solution

  • I need some help in below

    1. Where can I check the compliance of my XSLT's for 1.0 as JAXP 1.4 supports onlty XSLT 1.0 and Xpath 1.0?
    2. Is there a list of supported finctions etc for XSLT 1.0 (I am looking something similar to javadoc for XSLT and XPath

    1. One of the best ways to check particular XSLT code for compliance is to use (more than one) compliant XSLT processors. For example, it is almost certain that your code is compliant if it runs successfully with both Saxon 6.5.5 and MSXML4/6.

    2. The standard supported XSLT 1.0 and XPath 1.0 functions are specified in the corresponding specifications. Also this survey by Jesper Tverskov can be very useful.