Suitability of Cocoon

[Raman Jankiram <ra...@wcom.com>]

I have looked at the various packages like Xerces and Xalan on
xml.apache.org and also had a high level look at Cocoon. I am debating in my
mind on the  the suitablity of using Cocoon for a project described below. I
need some advice.

The project takes an invoice (which contains a set of approximately 20
reports) in XML format (each report is a node with sub nodes for line items
etc) and generates  HTML pages based on user interaction. The user comes in
and picks an account number and month, I have to open a connection of a XML
server, which will get the invoice the user has chosen. I probably have to
cache this XML file.

I have to present a list of reports based on presence or absence of nodes in
the XML file. When the user select a particular report and view, I have to
generate the HTML version of the report.


I plan to user SAX, write an XSL for every report (may be parameterize it
for the views) for which Xerces and Xalan will be suitable. I guess I need
to write 20 different XSL for each report. I am not sure if Cocoon will be
of any use to this problem. I can see the utility of Cocoon for some other
projects, but feel hesitant to use it here.

I would like to know if Cocoon will aid in what I am doing.


thanks
-Raman