XML serving Websites

[Paul O'Rorke]

We are using XML+XSL for a new virtual store at Sparks.com in S.F., CA, USA.  We use it with a
version of an open source publishing framework called Cocoon from Java Apache org.  We have it
running with a system based on EJBs, servlets, and BEA Weblogic.  It runs pretty well, but Cocoon is
a very general framework undergoing rapid change, and we're considering alternative, simpler designs
that might provide us with higher performance for our relatively specialized application.

The main advantage of Cocoon, XML, and XSL for us is that it enabled us to separate the business
logic and Java engineering from most of the artistic, graphical, layout and presentation issues
focused on by production personnel.  The servlets and EJBs are business focused and generate XML,
while the stylesheets tell Cocoon and XSL:P how to render the XML as HTML pages on the server.

One of the interesting things we discovered along the way is that nearly all of our pages are
dynamic, so Cocoon's early schemes for caching fully rendered pages did not help us much as we hoped
they might.  We got much more improvement in performance by simply caching stylesheets parsed as DOM
documents, since they generally contain most of the content of the final pages, especially HTML.
---Paul O
-- 
Paul O'Rorke, Ph.D.
C: (408) 202-7429
H: (408) 366-2848
W: (415) 642-6799 x122 (Sparks.com)

"John E. Simpson" wrote:
> 
> At 08:42 AM 7/9/1999 -0700, Satwinder Mangat wrote:
> >Is there any XML website?  What kind of Stylesheet are they using?
> 
> Check James Tauber's XMLSoftware site for one example; it's at:
>         http://www.xmlsoftware.com
> The site starts out as raw XML, transformed via XSLT stylesheet(s) into
> HTML+CSS for display. Very cool. For information about how he put this
> together, see his "XSL by Example" tutorial, at:
>         http://www.xmlsoftware.com/articles/xsl-by-example.html
> 
> =============================================================
> John E. Simpson          | It's no disgrace t'be poor,
> simpson at polaris.net      | but it might as well be.
>                          |            -- "Kin" Hubbard
> 
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