XSLT Cookbook

Joins

Problem

You want to relate elements in a document to other elements in the same or different document.

Solution

A join is the process of considering all pairs of element as being related (i.e., a Cartesian product) and keeping only those pairs that meet the join relationship (usually equality).

To demonstrate, I have adapted the supplier parts database found in Date’s An Introduction to Database Systems (Addison Wesley, 1986) to XML:

<database> <suppliers> <supplier id="S1" name="Smith" status="20" city="London"/> <supplier id="S2" name="Jones" status="10" city="Paris"/> <supplier id="S3" name="Blake" status="30" city="Paris"/> <supplier id="S4" name="Clark" status="20" city="London"/> <supplier id="S5" name="Adams" status="30" city="Athens"/> </suppliers> <parts> <part id="P1" name="Nut" color="Red" weight="12" city="London"/> <part id="P2" name="Bult" color="Green" weight="17" city="Paris"/> <part id="P3" name="Screw" color="Blue" weight="17" city="Rome"/> <part id="P4" name="Screw" color="Red" weight="14" city="London"/> <part id="P5" name="Cam" color="Blue" weight="12" city="Paris"/> <part id="P6" name="Cog" color="Red" weight="19" city="London"/> </parts> <inventory> <invrec sid="S1" pid="P1" qty="300"/> <invrec sid="S1" pid="P2" qty="200"/> <invrec sid="S1" pid="P3" qty="400"/> <invrec sid="S1" pid="P4" qty="200"/> <invrec sid="S1" pid="P5" qty="100"/> <invrec sid="S1" pid="P6" qty="100"/> <invrec sid="S2" pid="P1" qty="300"/> <invrec sid="S2" pid="P2" qty="400"/> <invrec ...