XSLT 1.0: restrict entries in a nodeset
- by Mike
Hi,
Being relatively new to XSLT I have what I hope is a simple question.
I have some flat XML files, which can be pretty big (eg. 7MB) that I need to
make 'more hierarchical'. For example, the flat XML might look like this:
<D0011>
....
....
and it should end up looking like this:
<D0011>
....
....
I have a working XSLT for this, and it essentially gets a nodeset of all the b
elements and then uses the 'following-sibling' axis to get a nodeset of the
nodes following the current b node (ie. following-sibling::*[position()
=$nodePos]). Then recursion is used to add the siblings into the result tree
until another b element is found (I have parameterised it of course, to make
it more generic).
I also have a solution that just sends the position in the XML of the next b
node and selects the nodes after that one after the other (using recursion) via
a *[position() = $nodePos] selection.
The problem is that the time to execute the transformation increases
unacceptably with the size of the XML file. Looking into it with XML Spy it
seems that it is the 'following-sibling' and 'position()=' that take the time
in the two respective methods.
What I really need is a way of restricting the number of nodes in the above
selections, so fewer comparisons are performed: every time the position is
tested, every node in the nodeset is tested to see if its position is the right one. Is there a way to do that ? Any other suggestions ?
Thanks,
Mike
