Java and XSLT

Making the XML Dynamic

At this point in the process, we have specified what each web page looks like, the XML data for each page, and the XSLT stylesheets to perform the necessary transformations. The next step is to figure out where the XML actually comes from. During the design and prototyping process, all XML data is created as a collection of static text files. This makes development of the XSLT stylesheets much easier, because the stylesheet authors can see results immediately without waiting for the back-end business logic and database access code to be created.

In the real system, static XML will not meet our requirements. We need the ability to extract data from a relational database and convert it into XML on the fly, as each page is requested. This makes the application “live,” making updates to the database immediately visible to users. To the XSLT stylesheet developer, this is a moot point. The XSLT transformations work the same, regardless of whether the XML data came from a flat file, a relational database, or any other source.

Domain Classes

A domain class is a Java class that represents something in the problem domain. That’s a fancy way to describe a class that represents the underlying problem you are trying to solve. In this example, we need to model the discussion forum as a series of Java classes to provide a buffer between the XML and the underlying relational database. In addition to representing data about the discussion forum, these Java classes can contain ...