webmasterbeta
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We are following a servlet model wherein our servlets generate XML documents,transform the documents with XSL and then send the translated output (HTML)down to the browser. We are trying to stick to an MVC model, which meansthe construction of the XML doc does not know about what work the XSL stylsheetwill do to construct the UI.In general, this works great for us. BUT we are struggling with how to supportframesets in this model. We do NOT want to have to generate frame specificcontent, since that would mean potentially structuring our server code tobe appropriate for every UI permutation we need to support (our environmentis highly customizable). If we have five customers that want five customuser interfaces, we do not want to implement each differently in the middleware- we'd like to isolate the differences at the XSL level.XSL 1.1 has a new feature that allows frames to be supported by writing XML/XSLoutput to the file system as a new document and then referencing the newdocument (.html) in a frameset. So you could have a stylesheet that createsa couple frames, as new docs in the file system, that are then pulled downby the browser. This is supported in SAXON.However, this seems inelegant because it results in all your dynamic contentbeing written into the file system, creating a potential file managementand security nightmare. I also would expect that customers might be queasyabout the idea of writing their content into the file system in this way.Has anybody solved the frameset problem a different way or do you know ofany standard schemes for dealing with transforming an XML doc across a frameset?I can't believe there isn't a better solution out there.Thanks in advance for insights.