trying to get started with simple xml stuff - use xalan ?

[Larry]

I am a C++/Java programmer trying to get going with some simpe xml
transformations at work here. I bought the O'Reilly book
Learning xlst for kicks. Someone at work sent me this
xml shown below, they wanted me to try to output some simple
text which summarizes the basic data in the xml and do it without
perl.
After that I guess they will want me to convert other xml files
into some kind of text file I am assuming. I downloaded xalan,
but I'm not sure if the NT version
will work on windows 2000. It appeard to not have a binary
file in the samples directory and I didn't see a C version for windows
2000
in the binaries directory of the download site. Should I go with the
java version ? The book says to get the C version. What difference
does it make ? I'm busy with a bunch of other stuff but am trying to
get a feel for xslt on the side and decide whether I like it or not
etc. I did some work with an xml parser in Java using DTD. Someone
else had actually started the project and left and I did some work on
it. Most of the xml stuff had allready been done
so I didn't get alot of xml exposure from that, though it's obviously
not rocket science.



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<cust>
<cust_detail indiv_id="123" name="Nilesh" />
<cust_detail indiv_id="456" name="Larry" />
</cust>

 

[Finnbarr P. Murphy]

I am a C++/Java programmer trying to get going with some simpe xml
transformations at work here. I bought the O'Reilly book
Learning xlst for kicks. Someone at work sent me this
xml shown below, they wanted me to try to output some simple
text which summarizes the basic data in the xml and do it without
perl.
After that I guess they will want me to convert other xml files
into some kind of text file I am assuming. I downloaded xalan,
but I'm not sure if the NT version
will work on windows 2000. It appeard to not have a binary
file in the samples directory and I didn't see a C version for windows
2000
in the binaries directory of the download site. Should I go with the
java version ? The book says to get the C version. What difference
does it make ? I'm busy with a bunch of other stuff but am trying to
get a feel for xslt on the side and decide whether I like it or not
etc. I did some work with an xml parser in Java using DTD. Someone
else had actually started the project and left and I did some work on
it. Most of the xml stuff had allready been done
so I didn't get alot of xml exposure from that, though it's obviously
not rocket science.



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<cust>
<cust_detail indiv_id="123" name="Nilesh" />
<cust_detail indiv_id="456" name="Larry" />
</cust>

If you simply want to experiment with xslt, or do very simple transformations,
on a Windows 2000 box, I suggest you simply use the msxsl utility.

To quote Microsoft:

"The msxsl.exe command line utility enables you to perform command line
Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) transformations using the Microsoft
XSL processor. Less than 30 kilobytes (KB) in size, the msxsl.exe utility
invokes the Microsoft XML Parser 4.0 (msxml4.dll) to perform the
transformation."

-F