"nontoxic" wrote:

> Hello Mark,
> >snip<
> in my opinion there are two problems with that structure:
> 1) You have to do a kind of mixed stepping through your structure. Because 
> you want to have displayed
> PLANT 1001 Items: xx123, xy132 Things: 123, 234, 345, 456
> you first need to step through the item nodes and than step through the 
> thing nodes while finding the appropriate PlantNo. This seems quite 
> difficult.

yup - hance the query for assistance from wiser and more experienced XSLT 
minds than mine... I _think_ I see a way to do this, but it seems kind-of a 
rube-goldbergian approach, and I was really hoping wiser minds might've been 
able to step in and say something like: "Oh, you want to do this..."/"Oh, 
look at this example over here..."

> 2) You said the rule is that PlantNos are identical for things and items. 
> But I think that this may not be REALLY guaranteed. So if there is some 
> PlantNo missing either in the items or in the things node because of any 
> reason, you would get a totally false and mixed display of items and things 
> that don't belong together or wrong assignments of items/things to a plant.

I hate to disagree, but that *is* an Iron-clad 100% guarantee in this case.
What we're doing here is building a template for an off-line series of 
processes.
The "Things" and "Items" (their names were changed to protect the innocent) 
are generated at different points in the template generation process, and 
handed off in bunches like I indicated originally.

> As a whole I suggest to use another structure, which is much more easier to 
> be stepped through.
> It looks like as follows:
> 
> <plant no="1001">
>  <items>
>   <item id="xx123"></item>
>   <item id="xy132"></item>
>  </items>
>  <things>
>   <thing id="123"></thing>
>   <thing id="234"></thing>
>   <thing id="345"></thing>
>   <thing id="456"></thing>
>  </things>
> </plant>
> <plant no="1012">
>  <items>
>   <item id="xz321"></item>
>  </items>
>  <things>
>   <thing id="233"></thing>
>   <thing id="334"></thing>
>  </things>
> </plant>

OK, well this is really the same transformation I posted to you only it's in 
XML vs TEXT form, isn't it?  I still need to get "there" from "here"...
 
> The question is, if your application can supply you with that structure 
> alternatively. In that structure each PlantNo only exist once so that any 
> mixtures of inappropriate items and things and wrong assignments of 
> items/things to a plant is impossible. Here you can step through each plant 
> one after another and first list all items and second all things.

Perhaps in the future we can do this, but for now, I'm pretty much going to 
have to live with it the way it is.

> Hope this helps you.
> 
> Nice greetings from
> nontoxic

...and thanks for taking the time to read & reply!