On Fri, Oct 31 2008 14:27:48 +0000, huttarl@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
...
> Obviously the performance problem was elsewhere. But the question I
> wanted to ask here is, what does this imply regarding good practices for
> writing efficient stylesheets?

The truism is that if you are worried about efficiency, you need to test
using the processor that you are going to use in production and using
something like the real data.

This example from my tutorial about testing XSLT [1] shows the result of
profiling the same stylesheet and data in both xsltproc and Saxon: the
two XSLT processors agreed on which were the two most time-intensive
templates, but after that, their results differed.

And in this instance, using the Saxon timing switch and profiling
stylesheet as shown in the tutorial (and in the Saxon documentation [2])
will help you identify your hotspots.

Regards,


Tony Graham                         Tony.Graham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Director                                  W3C XSL FO SG Invited Expert
Menteith Consulting Ltd
XML, XSL and XSLT consulting, programming and training
Registered Office: 13 Kelly's Bay Beach, Skerries, Co. Dublin, Ireland
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[1] http://www.menteithconsulting.com/wiki/XTech2007/MyStylesheetRunsBut#xsltproc
[2] http://www.saxonica.com/documentation/using-xsl/performanceanalysis.html