Summary

The focus of this chapter is on understanding the essence of XSLT. By understanding the essence, you will find it simpler to write scripts that do what you want them to do. This chapter covered these topics:

• The XMLSPY XSLT debugger

• XSLT as a transformation language first and a programming language second

• How to reference XML elements using either the abbreviated syntax or using axis specifiers

• Scripts that can iterate data, make decisions, and generate data

The next chapter covers more complex XSLT topics and some practical applications of XSLT.