Transforming XML with XSLT teaches you how to use the XSLT language to process your XML data into another markup format like HTML or WAP. You'll learn about the origins and current state of XSLT, and how to create simple "blueprint" stylesheets. Youll find out about XPath, another XML technology, and learn how to use it to navigate to any node in an XML tree. Youll discover how to use rule-based stylesheets to create powerful and flexible stylesheet applications. You'll also learn how XSLT differs from procedural programming languages, and how to apply the programming knowledge you already have to this new language and environment.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Create both simple "blueprint" stylesheets to provide quick transformations of your XML data and complex XSLT-based applications that use multiple XML data sources and multiple stylesheets.
• Use XPath to navigate an XML tree and get values from text nodes and attributes.
• Determine the best place and time to process a given transformation: Programmers workstation at design time, or upon request using the clients browser or the web server.
• Create rule-based stylesheets that are easy to maintain and extend.
• Design named templates that act as subroutines in an XSLT stylesheet.
• Use XSLT to calculate results and do totaling based on XML data.
• Decide if and when to use processor-specific extensions in your XSLT applications.

This course is aimed at the individual who already has a good understanding of XML, as well as some programming experience in any programming language. You should be familiar with elements, attributes, and the "tree" structure of an XML document. No specific programming language is required, but you should understand the purpose of control structures (such as the If...Then statement), looping structures, and variables. Most of the examples transform XML into HTML, so you should have a basic understanding of HTML tags.