On Tue, 2010-03-02 at 18:32 -0800, Alex Clark wrote:
[...]
> It seems to me that a natural progression is to extend XSLT from generally
> one input (XML) and one output (XML, HTML, etc) to include numerous input
> sources of varying types to numerous output targets.

This was a part of the XSLT 2.0 work -- XSLT 1 already supported
multiple XML inputs via the document() function, as well as text files,
and XSLT 2 adds the idea that any data source that can be represented in
terms of a shared data model can be processed by XSLT 2 and XQuery.

On the other hand, we (W3C) did not define explicit places to put, say,
SQL or SPARQL or other syntax to configure such inputs; for my own part
I'd be supportive of such an idea.

Outside W3C, such things can be done by groups of people -- e.g.
exslt.org -- and maybe even brought to W3C for standardization.
Within W3C, it's also possible, if at least two Member organizations
are sufficiently interested, to start a new "incubator group" to
investigate such things.

Having said all that, I also wonder whether XQuery isn't a better
starting-point for mashups... not because of differences in power
of the languages, but because of different focus of implementations.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
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