December 14, 2004

BIG, HUGE, GIGANTIC news for the XSLT 2.0 community

InfoTrends/CAP Ventures Articulates Business Benefits of XSLT 2.0

Sorry for copying all of the text from this press release but this is WAY to big of a deal to not highlight!

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[All of this is a direct copy from the press release]

According to a new analysis report from InfoTrends/CAP Ventures, the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) XSLT 2.0 (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) specification demonstrates the tangible benefits of a corporate and IT investment in XML (Extensible Markup Language). Titled "A Focus on XSLT 2.0: Understanding the Development and Business Benefits," the report discusses XSLT 2.0's ability to substantially reduce code complexity and streamline development while simultaneously allowing developers to increase the capabilities of XML transformations.

"XML usage is widespread throughout a myriad of data and document-driven business processes, and information transformation is a critical component for its success," said Mike Maziarka, Director of InfoTrends/CAP Ventures' Dynamic Content Software Strategies Consulting Service. "With the significant improvements made by the W3C to the XSLT 2.0 specification, we expect it to play an even larger role in applications focused on enterprise application integration, single source publishing, and content management."

The full six-page analysis report is currently available to the public and can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.capv.com/home/Downloads/10.22.04.pdf. The report explains the most recent additions to XSLT as outlined in the W3C's XSLT 2.0 working draft and the benefits of the additions from developer and corporate perspectives. The report also discusses the relationship of XSLT 2.0 with its sublanguage, XPath 2.0, and how these interdependent transformation and navigation languages form the key components of functional programming for XML content. These specifications provide several important benefits for developers and corporations, including enhanced developer productivity, data reusability and interoperability, and application versatility.

XSLT 2.0's productivity and development quality benefits highlighted in the report include the reduction of complex and proprietary coding through the use of higher order functions and support for strong data typing. Notable data reusability benefits include support for user-defined functions, multiple output processing from a single XSLT transformation, and data grouping and aggregation. Notable areas of data interoperability include support for multiple input processing as well as string sorting and comparison. In addition, the specification's versatility is indicated by the introduction of temporary trees, independent processing capabilities, and support for complex text and data manipulation.