This is the mail archive of the xsl-list@mulberrytech.com mailing list .


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

RE: xslt on server-side vs. client-side


Chris,

If there is use of the XSLT on the client side then you may save some costs,
in some cases.  However, I think I was clear that, in restricting this to
1000 different clients for 1000 total passes, that no reuse was
happening...? 

In that particular case, suppose that we have two units of work:  some HTML
we want to produce on the browser and some XML and XSLT we want to transform
to produce this HTML.  The odds that the XML/XSLT combined in size are
smaller than the HTML are extremely low (at least for the XSLT I've written,
it is a rather verbose language!).  So, there are no traffic savings in the
simple scenario that I've described (if the XSLT is reused on the client
it's a different matter).

Now let's also suppose that the work to process the XML/XSL is equal to the
work to render the HTML (a likely generous assumption): 2 units of work
total.  Then sending the work to 1000 clients results in 2000 units of total
work being done.  If you do the same processing on the server, the XML/XSLT
will already be at least partially cached (on a properly designed server the
efficiency of re-running the transform will be high). I've seen work loads
drop by orders of magnitude for subsequent passes, but let's say the result
is a 50% reduction in work load (again being generous).  In that case, the
total work done with the processing on the server is 1000+1+499.5 = 1500.5
units of total work (1000 units of client rendering, 1 full pass on the
server and 999 passes at 50% of the original cost).  A more realistic
scenario would see something like 4000 units of work on the client side and
1000+4+399.9 = 1807.8 doing it all on the server).

Don't misunderstand me, I'm a big believer in distributed computing -- I
founded the distributed computing Project for SHARE (now SHARE/GUIDE) some
12 or so years ago.  However, the original assertation that sending an
XML/XSLT transform to the client somehow automatically saves electricity
just doesn't pan out.  

Yes, there are cases where sending a transform to a client make sense.
However, many people seem to use the  MS IE combination to process XML/XSLT
simply because they don't have the ability (knowledge/whatever) to process
it on the server side.  In such a case, it's likely not sound ecological
reasoning that's driving the decision!




 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]