XML combining question.

[Berin Loritsch <bl...@infoplanning.com>]

I need a method to allow my business analysts access to the verbage on a

form, but need to use the results from an XML document to populate the
values in the form.  One way of doing that would be to use XSL to
combine
two XML documents, but I don't believe that is currently possible.

Now the real question: would that kind of facility be better suited to a

custom producer that pulled the document from whatever source, and
merged the results with the XML "form" (not the standard spec, I haven't

looked at that yet)?  Or would it be better to use XSP and separate the
tags?

The reason I ask this is because we want to be able to use the same XML
document to render it as a form, a PDF file, an XML stream, a display
only
page, or an Excell Spreadsheet (if we get the go ahead to develop that).

The reason I don't wan't the business analysts to have access to the XSL
is
because it will confuse them, and risk them breaking the site because of

clumsy typing, etc.  A simple XML document that enumerates the questions

and help text will make things go a long way toward a truly flexible
system.

The XML document that would be rendered differently would be generated
as a stream from another system, or accessed in a way that a producer or

XSP could get at it.  So maybe I answered my own question.

Maybe this warrants further discussion, though.  Suppose for business
and
maintainability reasons a site wants to combine two XML documents and
render the merged results to HTML, is there any facility (and more
importantly should there be any facility) to address that situation?
The bottom
line is what is the most elegant and truly maintainable method for a
problem
where you want to render a transaction based XML document and
incorporate
business analyst wording in the display?