XSLT 2,0 and XPath 2,0 Programmer's Reference,

Combining coverage of both XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0, this book is the definitive reference to the final recommendation status versions of both specifications. The authors start by covering the concepts in XSLT and XPath, and then delve into elements, operators, expressions with syntax, usage, and examples. Some of the specific topics covered include XSLT processing model, stylesheet structure, serialization, extensibility, and many others. In addition to online content that includes error codes, the book also has case studies you'll find applicable to your own challenges.

Autorentext
Michael Kay has been working in the XML field since 1997; he became a member of the XSL Working Group soon after the publication of XSLT 1.0, and took over as editor of the XSLT 2.0 specification in early 2001. He is also a member of the XQuery and XML Schema Working Groups, and is a joint editor of the XPath 2.0 specification. He is well known not only through previous editions of this book but also as the developer of the open source Saxon product, a pioneering implementation of XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, and XQuery 1.0.

In 2004 the author formed his own company, Saxonica, to provide commercial software and services building on the success of the Saxon technology. Previously, he spent three years with Software AG, working with the developers of the Tamino XML server, an early XQuery implementation. His background is in database technology: after leaving the University of Cambridge with a Ph.D., he worked for many years with the (then) computer manufacturer ICL, developing network, relational, and objectoriented database software products as well as a text search engine, and held the position of ICL Fellow.

Klappentext

This book is primarily a practical reference book for professional XSLT developers. It assumes no previous knowledge of the language, and many developers have used it as their first introduction to XSLT; however, it is not structured as a tutorial, and there are other books on XSLT that provide a gentler approach for beginners.

The book does assume a basic knowledge of XML, HTML, and the architecture of the Web, and it is written for experienced programmers. There's no assumption that you know any particular language such as Java or Visual Basic, just that you recognize the concepts that all programming languages have in common.

The book is suitable both for XSLT 1.0 users upgrading to XSLT 2.0, and for newcomers to XSLT. The book is also equally suitable whether you work in the Java or .NET world.

As befits a reference book, a key aim is that the coverage should be comprehensive and authoritative. It is designed to give you all the details, not just an overview of the 20 percent of the language that most people use 80 percent of the time. It's designed so that you will keep coming back to the book whenever you encounter new and challenging programming tasks, not as a book that you skim quickly and then leave on the shelf. If you like detail, you will enjoy this book; if not, you probably won't.

But as well as giving the detail, this book aims to explain the concepts, in some depth. It's therefore a book for people who not only want to use the language but who also want to understand it at a deep level.

The book aims to tell you everything you need to know about the XSLT 2.0 language. It gives equal weight to the things that are new in XSLT 2.0 and the things that were already present in version 1.0. The book is about the language, not about specific products. However, there are appendices about Saxon (the author's own implementation of XSLT 2.0), about the Altova XSLT 2.0 implementation, and about the Java and Microsoft APIs for controlling XSLT transformations, which will no doubt be upgraded to handle XSLT 2.0 as well as 1.0. A third XSLT 2.0 processor, Gestalt, was released shortly before the book went to press, too late to describe it in any detail. But the experience of XSLT 1.0 is that there has been a very high level of interoperability between different XSLT processors, and if you can use one of them, then you can use them all.

In the previous edition we split XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 into separate volumes. The idea was that some readers might be interested in XPath alone. However, many bought the XSLT 2.0 book without its XPath companion and were left confused as a result; so this time, the material is back together. The XPath reference information is in self-contained chapters, so it should still be accessible when you use XPath in contexts other than XSLT.

The book does not cover XSL Formatting Objects, a big subject in its own right. Nor does it cover XML Schemas in any detail. If you want to use these important technologies in conjunction with XSLT, there are other books that do them justice.

This book contains twenty chapters and eight appendixes (the last of which is a glossary) organized into four parts. The following section outlines what you can find in each part, chapter, and appendix.

Part I: Foundations: The first part of the book covers essential concepts. You should read these before you start coding. If you ignore this advice, as most people do, then you read them when you get to that trough of despair when you find it impossible to make the language do anything but the most trivial tasks. XSLT is different from other languages, and to make it work for you, you need to understand how it was designed to be used.

Chapter 1: XSLT in Context: This chapter explains how XSLT fits into the big picture: how the language came into being and how it sits alongside other technologies. It also has a few simple coding examples to keep you alert.

Chapter 2: The XSLT Processing Model: This is about the architecture of an XSLT processor: the inputs, the outputs, and the data model. Understanding the data model is perhaps the most important thing that distinguishes an XSLT expert from an amateur; it may seem like information that you can't use immediately, but it's knowledge that will stop you making a lot of stupid mistakes.

Chapter 3: Stylesheet Structure: XSLT development is about writing stylesheets, and this chapter takes a bird's eye view of what stylesheets look like. It explains the key concepts of rule-based programming using templates, and explains how to undertake programming-in-the-large by structuring your application using modules and pipelines.

**Chapt...

Inhalt
Introduction xxix

List of Examples xxxix

Part I: Foundations

Chapter 1: XSLT in Context 3

What Is XSLT? 3

How Does XSLT Transform XML? 7

The Place of XSLT in the XML Family 21

The History of XSL 26

XSLT 2.0 as a Language 33

Summary 40

Chapter 2: The XSLT Processing Model 41

XSLT: A System Overview 41

The XDM Tree Model 45

The Transformation Process 67

Error Handling 80

Variables and Expressions 80

Summary 88

Chapter 3: Stylesheet Structure 89

Changes in XSLT 2.0 90

The Modular Structure of a Stylesheet 90

The Element 98

The Processing Instruction 99

Embedded Stylesheets 102

Declarations 104

Instructions 108

Simplified Stylesheets 125

Writing Portable Stylesheets 127

Whitespace 141

Summary 148

Chapter 4: Stylesheets and Schemas 151

XML Schema: An Overview 151

Declaring Types in XSLT 161

Validating the Source Document 165

Validating the Result Document 170

Validating a Temporary Document 174

Validating Individual Elements 176

Validating Individual Attributes 179

The default-validation Attribute 180

Importing Schemas 180

Using xsi:type 181

Nillability 182

Summary 183

Chapter 5: Types 185

What Is a Type System? 185

Changes in 2.0 186

Sequences 187

Atomic Values 189

Atomic Types 191

Schema Types and XPath Types 217

The Type Matching Rules 219

Static and Dynamic Type Checking 221

Summary 224

**Part II: XSLT and …