XML transformation tool (fxt)

XMLTransformation Tool (fxt) is a transformation language for XML documents whose development is linked to the Standard Meta Language( SML). fxt is to be classified in the environment of the XML application-specific languages. Thereby the XML data is mapped in the structure of a tree.

This structure is comparable with the Infoset of XML. Comparable with the procedure of XSLT, rules form the basis of a fxt program. A central match pattern is used to determine which nodes of the tree a rule refers to. With it then likewise the actions which can be accomplished with the respective steps of the transformation are determined. fxt programs do not know support of namespaces are however XML documents. The fxt code is translated to SML before the transformation is executed, which enables the execution of an XML transformation directly from other SML code.

Analogous to regular expressions for strings, fxt applies special regular match patterns. These patterns in turn allow to determine the matching pattern for all contained nodes after traversing the input tree at most twice.

fxt is comparable to XSLT in terms of its level of abstraction and maintainability. Through the translated SML code - and thus through the fxt processor - the well-formedness of the XML document can be ensured. By the illustration of the XML document as a tree, the extent of a XML document which can be transformed is limited only by the resource memory. A serial transformation of documents is not possible due to the limitations of match patterns.