Re: Dump XPATHs

> When people ask for generated XPath expressions, they are usually asking
for
> some kind of canonical path from the root to a node - typically a path
whose
> steps all use the child or attribute axis and whose NodeTests all consist
of
> an element or attribute name.
>
> Even with this restriction, however, if the schema is recursive then the
> number of possible canonical XPaths that can retrieve a node is infinite.
>

I think perhaps a more useful tool would be an XPath-Generator, something
that would display an instance document, then selecting a certain node would
give you the XPath you were looking for. But again, this may not be that
practical since most XPaths are relative, you're trying to grab node X while
you are on node Y, so maybe an XPath generator where you tell the
application which node to start with...

But to bring this to full circle, what's the actual purpose for an "XPATH
dump"? Maybe if we knew the 'requirements' better, we could propose a better
solution.

Bryce K. Nielsen
SysOnyx, Inc. (www.sysonyx.com)
Makers of xmlLinguist, the EDI-to-XML Translator
http://www.xmllinguist.com