xsl:key, grouping, and external documents

[Kl...@inventivedesigners.com]

Hi,

I followed the information that Jeni Tenniston put on her website to do
grouping using generate-id() and key() functions. (See
http://www.jenitennison.com/xslt/keys.html and look for the Muenchian
method).

This works great if you're working with one XML document, but now I have
several XML documents that are included using the Xalan XConnection
extension to get the data from SQL databases. This extension basically
gives me an XML document in an xsl:variable. But, I'm suffering from
problems with xsl:key which doesn't seem to work on other XML sources than
the root XML file.

1. Why is xsl:key not working on external XML files?
2. How can I circumvent this problem to do grouping and sorting on external
XML documents?

Thank you very much for any hints toards the good direction...
Klaas Bals

Note: If you need sample XML and XSL files to work out a solution, let me
know.
Note 2:  I am a programmer myself, so if you let me know how or where to
adapt Xalan, I might be able to do the programming!