The Business Case for XSLT 2.0

by Kurt Cagle In my previous posting (Imports and Tunnelling in XSLT2) I started down a path that I’ve been planning on covering for a while: presenting a solid business case for migrating to XSLT2. When I first encountered XSLT, after an initial period of attempting to understand the paradigm, I found myself both impressed and disappointed. XSLT is an often underrated technology, in great part because it doesn’t fit cleanly into the Algol-based model that is most commonly used today (C, C++, C#, Java, etc.).

I consider XSLT something of a jujitsu language - it is most effective when used sparingly, letting the XML itself do the heavy lifting with the XSLT providing just enough of the pivotal support to do incredible things. That’s why it has quietly become the silent partner on any number of different platforms as XML becomes more pervasive on those platforms. It is used within any number of Java and .NET applications, just another piece of the infrastructure, though one that does a disproportionate amount of the real work in applications that are increasingly driven by dynamic GUIs and web services.