Faster Performance

iceandrews · February 2nd, 2009, 04:28 PM

I have question regarding which stylesheet will be the faster performing one.

The input document is a XML document with thousands of lines.

The transformation that I'm running contains a lookup table in the following format:

Code:

<xsl:variable name="lobNamespaces">
     <LOBTable>
         <LOBs>
             <LOB LOBCode="URI1">
                 <Namespace>http://uri1.com</Namespace>
                 <NamespacePrefix>uri1</NamespacePrefix>
                 <Description>text1</Description>
             </LOB>
             <LOB LOBCode="URI2">
                 <Namespace>http://uri2.com</Namespace>
                 <NamespacePrefix>uri2</NamespacePrefix>
                 <Description>text2</Description>
             </LOB>
     ....
     ....
     (more LOBS)
         </LOBs>
     </LOBTable>
</xsl:variable>

This is a recursive transformation that looks at each element node in the incoming document. Some of the nodes contain an attribute @NSTag. The transformation finds this NSTag and then applies a certain template based on the value of that NSTag attribute. I have 2 ways of doing it, one with explicit pathing on the lookup table and one using a key structure. Obviously this is only a fraction of the code, but i think it provide the right idea. We are running in a saxon enviroment on a service bus. Which one would be the faster implementaion performance wise? I have a feeling the key valued transformation is the better perfomer.

Transformation Template 1 (Explicit Pathing)

Code:

...
<xsl:apply-templates select=".">
     <xsl:with-param name="PF" select="$lobNamespaces/LOBTable/LOBs/LOB[@LOBCode = current()/@NSTag]/NamespacePrefix"/>
     <xsl:with-param name="NS" select="$lobNamespaces/LOBTable/LOBs/LOB[@LOBCode = current()/@NSTag]/Namespace"/>
</xsl:apply-templates>

Transformation Template 2 (Keyed Values)

Code:

<xsl:key name="LOBKey" match="LOBTable/*/LOB" use="@LOBCode"/> 
...
...
<xsl:apply-templates select=".">
     <xsl:with-param name="PF" select="$lobNamespaces/key('LOBKey', current()/@NSTag)/NamespacePrefix"/>
     <xsl:with-param name="NS" select="$lobNamespaces/key('LOBKey', current()/@NSTag)/Namespace"/>
</xsl:apply-templates>

Thank you and I appreciate your insights!

mhkay · February 2nd, 2009, 05:09 PM

Using the key is likely to be faster on most processors. However, a processor with a strong optimizer like Saxon-SA will do just as well with either. Really, all performance questions depend on the product you are using and the best way to get an answer is to measure it.

iceandrews · February 2nd, 2009, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhkay

Using the key is likely to be faster on most processors. However, a processor with a strong optimizer like Saxon-SA will do just as well with either. Really, all performance questions depend on the product you are using and the best way to get an answer is to measure it.

Thank you very much! Unfortunately we don't have the luxury to performance test it as much as we would like. We are, however, using the Saxon-SA ver 9 so it should be pretty fast! We've been really pleased with the product.