Summary

XSL (Extensible Style Language) is an extremely powerful style sheet technology that is aimed at providing a purely XML-based solution for the transformation and formatting of XML documents. XSL consists of three fundamental technologies: XSL Transformation (XSLT), XPath, and XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO). XSLT tackles the transformation aspect of XSL and is capable of transforming an XML document in a particular language into a completely different XML-based language. XPath is used within XSLT to identify portions of an XML document for transformation. XSL-FO addresses the need for a high-powered XML-based formatting language. XSL-FO has limited support in current web browsers, but XSLT and XPath are more than ready to deliver for web-based applications.

This hour introduced you to the different technologies that comprise XSL. Perhaps more important is the practical knowledge you gained of XSLT, which culminated in a complete XSLT style sheet example. Just in case you're worried that this hour hit only the high points of XSLT, the next hour digs deeper into the technology and uncovers topics such as sorting nodes and using expressions to perform mathematical computations.