XSLT 1.0 vs XSLT 2.0

BuckBazooka · November 3rd, 2010, 09:45 AM

Hi,
This might be a very dumb question but I will ask it anyway. A colleague of mine who is a very good programmer told me "XSLT 2.0 specification is a dead end specification and that it is a better idea to stick to version 1.0".

What are your opinion about this? Is this total baloney or is there something true about this? Could some of you let me know what you think about this?

I am using Xalan XSLT 1.0 successfully, but I see some features in XSLT 2.0 which could be very nice to have. Is it worth to switch?

Thanks for your comments.

Martin Honnen · November 3rd, 2010, 09:49 AM

If you use the Java version of Xalan then you can easily switch to XSLT 2.0 by using Saxon 9 (http://saxon.sourceforge.net/).
I don't know why your colleague claims XSLT 2.0 is a dead end, it has several implementations and work is one the way for XSLT 3.0.
The only dead end seem to be browsers which all only implement/support XSLT 1.0. But as a Xalan user you do not seem to do client-side/browser/side XSLT anyway.

BuckBazooka · November 3rd, 2010, 09:51 AM

This is correct. I use Java, everything I do with XSLT is happening on the Server Side. Thanks

joefawcett · November 3rd, 2010, 10:02 AM

Total baloney is an understatement but censorship prohibits my real thoughts. There are excellent XSLT 2.0 processors and the stage is set for version 2.1 and beyond. Only if you stick with Microsoft's home grown libraries are you prevented from using anything more than version 1.0.

mhkay · November 3rd, 2010, 10:28 AM

XSLT 2.0 doubles what you can do with the language and doubles the speed of doing it. The only reason to stick with XSLT 1.0 (and it's a genuine reason for some people) is if you can't get hold of an XSLT 2.0 processor for your chosen environment - e.g. within the browser.