This chapter is designed to put XSLT in context. It's about
the purpose of XSLT and the task it was designed to perform. It's
about what kind of language it is, and how it came to be that way;
and it's about how XSLT fits in with all the other technologies that
you are likely to use in a typical web-based application. I won't be
saying much in this chapter about what an XSLT stylesheet actually
looks like or how it works: that will come later, in Chapters 2 and
3.
I shall begin by describing the task that XSLT is designed to
perform - transformation - and why there is the need to transform XML
documents. I'll then present a trivial example of a transformation in
order to explain what this means in practice.
The chapter then moves on to discuss the relationship of XSLT to
other standards in the growing XML family, to put its function into
context and explain how it complements the other standards.
I'll describe what kind of language XSLT is, and delve a little
into the history of how it came to be like that. If you're impatient
you may want to skip the history and get on with using the language,
but sooner or later you will ask "why on earth did they design it
like that?" and at that stage I hope you will go back and read about
the process by which XSLT came into being.
Finally, I'll have a few things to say about the different ways of
using XSLT within the overall architecture of an application, in
which there will inevitably be many other technologies and components
each playing their own part.
©1999 Wrox Press Limited,
US and UK.
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