With its platform independent data delivery feature, the XML technology that brought about the innovation of separating content from layout is accepted as standard in e-commerce software. The data in XML format can be used in various environments such as the Internet, Intranet, CD, PDA, etc. 

The shift from conventional web technologies such as ASP, JSP or PHP to XML based applications is neither expensive nor painful. New generation browsers are equipped with XSLT (XSL Transformation) capability and can render a dynamic web page locally. After the XML and the XSL is retrieved from the server, the browsers form the HTML by themselves. The servers are not required to generate the HTML files for dynamic pages and their load is reduced extensively. 

ADVANTAGES OF XSL BASED DEVELOPMENT

The Separation of Content from Layout

A maxim accepted by all software developers is the importance of separation of content from layout. However, the technologies widely used today do not conform to this principle; the programming codes and visual layout of a data driven page are merged together when using these technologies, as it is the case in ASP, JSP or PHP architecture.

XML & XSL technologies conform fully to this maxim: While XSL represents the layout, XML represents the data. The programmer works to provide the data and the designer focuses on the look and ergonomy of dynamic pages. In this way, they can work independently of each other and the development process is shortened to a great extent. 

Additionally, the same data can be represented in a variety of layouts using different XSL pages.

The Reduction in Server Load

In the commonly used technologies, database driven web pages are generated on the server before they are sent to the browser in HTML format. This is a very CPU time consuming task on the server, especially for heavily loaded sites. 

New generation browsers are equipped with XSLT (XSL transformation) capability; they can generate HTML by merging XML with XSL. The server is no longer the only unit responsible for generating the HTML. 

When a request for a dynamic page is received by the Server, without constructing the HTML it simply sends the XML to the browser. Once the browser receives the XML, it retrieves the XSL of the page and makes XSLT locally to generate the HTML.

Using XML & XSL technologies, the application servers can handle much more requests than the servers using the conventional technologies.

The Reduction in Network Traffic

The size of a data driven HTML page, which is generated on the server and then sent to browser, can be huge as the layout code is repeated for each data block. 

In XML & XSL technology, the size is largely reduced, as only the XML containing the data is sent to the browser. For instance, an XML document of 5K in size would contain the same data as that of an HTML page of 50K. Since it requires less network traffic, it can again respond to more requests with a reduced bandwidth.