OK, here is my dilemma. I need to calculate the sum of an attribute of a child node. That's easy enough, however, the reason i call this a dilemma rests in the fact that it required to add a default value if the child node is not present. Basically, Is there a way sum all of these values and if the node/attribute is not present for a given node then add a default value?

p.s. To add to the challenge, it must be compatable with a XSLT 1.0 processor. I do wish to apologize for this limitation. It is not my choice to use such an obsolete processor.

p.s.s. To anyone that can provide me any help, your time and help is invaluable.

perhaps you can do something like this:
sum of child attributes
+ default * (count of not present child nodes)
?

not easy to see what the xslt might be unless you can show your xml structure...

This is the same as any other problem summing over a computed value (the classical example is summing over price*quantity; another example is summing the prices after removing a currency symbol).

The solutions break down into three categories:

(a) recursive solutions: walk the sequence of nodes in a step-by-step recursive scan, keeping track of the running total as you go

(b) two-pass solutions: compute the values to be totalled in the first pass over the data (e.g. in an extra attribute), total them using the sum() function in the second pass

(c) reuse an existing solution that's already been implemented: this problem is very easy do solve using Dimitre Novatchev's FXSL library, once you've worked out how to install this library.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

Actually, for this example there's a fourth solution which might be simpler: sum the values for those nodes that have the attribute, then add N times the number of nodes that don't have the attribute, where N is the default value:

sum(item/@a) + count(item[not(@a)])*$default-value

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

A whimsical fifth solution. Use a validating parser with a schema where the default attribute value is specified. The sum all of the attributes.

Should that work Michael?

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)

All of your suggestion have helped me gain the greater picture! So thank you! For my purposes Micheal Kay's fourth suggestion will fit all of my neededs! Thanks again!