Introduction

This chapter covers recipes for using XSLT as an XML query language. Querying XML means extracting information from one or more XML documents to answer questions about facts and relationships occurring in and among these documents. By analogy, querying an XML document involves asking the same types of questions of XML using XSLT that one might ask of a relational database using SQL.

The "official" query language for XML promulgated by the W3C is not XSLT, but XQuery (http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/). XSLT and XQuery have many similarities, but also some striking differences. For example, XSLT and XQuery both rely on XPath. However, an XSLT script is always in XML syntax, while an XQuery script has both a human-friendly and XML syntax (http://www.w3.org/TR/xqueryx).

When the idea for an XML query language distinct from XSLT was proposed, it was controversial. Many members of the XML community thought there would be too much overlap between the two. Indeed, any query formulated in XQuery could also be implemented in XSLT. In many cases, the XSLT solution is as concise as the XQuery solution. The advantage of XQuery is that it is generally easier to understand than the equivalent XSLT. Indeed, XQuery should present a much smaller learning curve to those already versed in SQL. Obviously, comprehension is also a function of what you are used to, so these comparisons are not absolute.

Explaining XQuery in detail or providing a detailed comparison between it and XSLT is beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, this chapter provides query examples for those who have already invested time into XSLT and do not wish to learn yet another XML-related language.

It would be impossible to create examples that exhausted all types of queries you might want to run on XML data. Instead, this chapter takes a two-pronged approach. First, it presents primitive and generally applicable query examples. These examples are building blocks that can be adapted to solve more complex query problems. Second, it presents a recipe that shows solutions to most XML query-use cases presented in the W3C document XML Query Use Cases (http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlquery-use-cases). In many cases, you can find a solution to a use-case instance that is similar enough to the particular query problem you face. It then becomes a simple matter of adapting the solution to the particulars of your XML data.