Converting a Web page to XML/XSL

Hi,

I am new to XML & XSL.

I have desinged a web site in pure HTML/DHTML. Now we have to convert this site into XML/XSL. I have to provde the XSL style sheet for the web pages. Can any body help in proceeding on this. The new web site is completey dynamic.

Rgds
sh

w3schools.com has some good tutorials and examples. FYI: XML/XSL support is limited even in 5.X browsers.

I don't know what technologies you are using to develop but I use MySQL, PHP to create dynamic XML files that can be merged with XSL files to create sites.

The data is taken from the database, converted to XML and merged with XSL stylesheets, all with PHP. That way you don't have XML, XSLT browser compatibility issues. I know Java can be used this way. Most likely ASP and others as well.

Why would you do this? What advantages does that have? Wouldn't it be easier to store the data in mySQL and use PHP to make the site OR store the data in XML and use PHP to get that XML and make the site OR use XML to store the data and XSL to make the site. Can you explain the advantage to having data stored in two separate places, and having to extract from mySQL, build XML, then parse XML with XSL -- it seems like a lot of unecessary extra work.

I'm not storing the data in XML files because the data is constantly being update, added, deleted etc. It's a lot of data and I don't want to be writing and rewriting large XML files. PHP creates small XML containing only the neccessary data retreived from the database and holds it in memory until it merges with the XSL. It never really stores that data in two places. I don't need to write these small XML files to anywhere. I only need to set it up this way once then the XSL guys can create as many different templates as they want.

Another reason and probably even more important is I'm trying to keep the presentation layer away from the database layer (it makes life so happy). I have a database tier, a business tier that handles all database connectivity and then the presentation layer. My presentation layer never interacts with the database tier, only the business tier. That way if the database changes I don't have to try to edit every page that connects to the database on the presentaion layer, only the object in the business layer.

It might not seem easier to do it this way but in order to make my sites more easily maintainable, portable and scalable I avoid directly accessing the data tier from the presentation layer, whether its XML or a database. There are really alot of benefits to this method.

Telling me there are "XSL guys" pretty much answers my question. You need the data presented in a manner in which another can work with it, and that manner just happens to be XSL, so the data needs to be XML. Makes sense now with that little bit of information.