>
> I think I would prefer an extension function within the XSLT
> itself rather than from the command line, because then I
> would be able to note the time immediately before and after
> the function in question.

If you're using Saxon, the best way of getting fine-grained instrumentation
is to use the TimerTraceListener, which can be activated using -TP from the
command line.

I tried the -TP option, it provides a lot more useful analysis
information than I imagined. It is especially useful to see the timing
analysis for each function call itself.

java -Xss16384k -jar c:\dev\saxonb8-9-0-3j\saxon8.jar -it mainTemplate
-TP recursion.xsl 2>profile.xml

java -jar c:\dev\saxonb8-9-0-3j\saxon8.jar profile.xml
timing-profile.xsl >profile.html

In my case since I tried to calculate the factorial of 10450 , the
profile.xml was about 1MB, this of course is because of the huge
number of nested function calls. I  find the breakdown of each
functions time made possible by Saxons -TP option quite useful.

Then I lowered the parameter to factorial of 10, and observed that the
function calls are nested inside profile.xml , which makes is useful
to trace how they're called.

This writes a file containing timing information; there's a
stylesheet called analyze.xsl in the samples folder which allows you to
summarize this information and determine how much time was spent in each
template or function.

Java's timing information is not very precise; you will only get meaningful

Yes, I guess it varies because the garbage collection of objects
happens at random.

To me it is not important to calculate the time precisely,
nevertheless it is useful to know the fact.

figures for a template or function that's executed several hundred times.

Details at
http://www.saxonica.com/documentation/using-xsl/performanceanalysis.html

I haven't fully explored Saxon, I meant to do my homework, but thank
you for pointing this out.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

-Regards
Rashmi