Database Reference
In-Depth Information
17.1.1
What Is XSL?
XSL extends XML by applying repetitive transformations for repeating
groups. What does that mean? A relational database table can be used to
produce multiple XML elements, repeating groups or rows (each row in a
table has the same structure of columns). Thus XSL can be used to apply a
common style or appearance to each of those rows. XSL basically applies a
template to each row and makes it look nice. Once again, let's demonstrate.
The following XSL script in Figure 17.2 shows a style sheet applicable to
the example in Figure 17.1. The result of combining the XML page data
and the style sheet is shown in Figure 17.3.
Figure 17.2
An XSL
Document.
So now we very briefly know what HTML, DHTML, XML, and XSL
all are. Now let's look into XML as applied to Oracle SQL.
17.2
Using XML in Oracle
In its most basic form, XML in Oracle SQL consists of the XMLType
datatype and several functions. The XMLType stores the text of XML docu-
ments and allows access to the XML document object model. The docu-
ment object model allows access to all of the elements in an XML
document programmatically.
The objective of this chapter is to briefly introduce using XML in Ora-
cle SQL. So in order to keep it simple, let's look at it this way: What would
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