next up previous
Next: 1.4 Semi-structured Data, Data Up: 1. Technical Background Previous: 1.2 XML Schema

1.3 XSLT

XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language: Transformations) is a W3C Recommendation, one of two components of a mechanism for associating information about intended appearance with XML documents. The `Transformation' part of XSLT is what is of interest here: it provides a very powerful functional language, using pattern-directed invocation, to specify a mapping from one family of structured documents into another.

Although XSLT'S primary purpose is for transforming from XML to XML or HTML, it also makes provision for transforming XML into arbitrary application-internal structures, via an extension mechanism.



Henry Thompson
2000-09-13