Querying the DOM using XPath

[Barnowsky, Greg T.]

Sorry for the poorly worded question.  Let's see if this is a little better.


   If I am currently parsing through a well-formed and validated XML
document based on prior knowledge of it's schema using
   the Microsoft MSXML Component Model API and my favorite prog. language,
what does the support of XPath provide me? 
   For example, does it allow me to abstract parsing logic from code?  Is it
much faster than using the component API?

   I am currently processing the XML Document with no intentions to display
the information.  That is, this processing is 
   oriented to backoffice B2B operations, e.g. mappings, translations,
auditing, etc. not presentation on a Web Page.

Maybe I just have missed something in the spec, or am not familiar with the
quirks of XML to see if XPath for me provides any 
benefit.

Hope this clears it up.

Regards
Greg Barnowsky
Unisys Corporation

-----Original Message-----
From: Hunter, David [mailto:dhunter at Mobility.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2000 1:18 PM
To: 'Barnowsky, Greg T.'; xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Subject: RE: Querying the DOM using XPath 


From: Barnowsky, Greg T. [mailto:greg.t.barnowsky at unisys.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2000 12:56 PM
> 
> Microsoft has recently announced the support of XPath and 
> XSLT in its XML
> parser.  Can anyone tell me if I am currently searching XML 
> Doc information
> via VB Script
> and what XPath will provide over my current script code?

I'm not sure if I fully understand the question, but here is what the new
XSLT and XPath support mean for MSXML:

Currently, MSXML allows you to transform XML documents into other formats,
using an ancient form of XSL.  It also lets you use a language called XQL to
traverse XML documents.  (XQL was, I believe, an earlier precursor to
XPath.)

With the new version (slated to be released tomorrow in Beta), the
transformation language used will be real XSLT, as specified in the
finalized W3C spec.  Because XSLT uses XPath, Microsoft also had to update
their XPath implementation, so that XSLT would work properly.

MSXML's DOM implementation also uses XQL in some of its methods; for
example, there is a selectNodes() method which takes an XQL expression and
returns a node-set of all nodes matching your XPath expression.  So again,
the outdated XQL syntax currently in use will be replaced with real XPath.

David Hunter
david.hunter at mobileq.com
http://www.MobileQ.com

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