Information services company automates processes with new XSLT skills

A leading UK information services company requested to JBI to run a XSLT training programme for one of their teams.

XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language transformations) is an XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents and data, usually into HTML web pages and pdf documents. XSLT is a scripting language that is most often used by editors and, in the case of the information services company, XML and XSLT are most useful when the company is dealing with large volumes of data or when the data must be held and re-used in different contexts over long time periods. Using XSLT to create many different style sheets all from one XML document such as one for HTML on the web and one for wireless WML. This is important for the information services company who must be able to personalise the data that they have collected to the company who will be receiving it and thus manipulating the data by filtering, reordering and adding information is vital. XSLT can also be used as a validation language because it uses tree-pattern-matching approach. XSLT is also coupled with XPath and the data manipulation function library it has, which reduces the workload for XML data structure transformations.

JBI organised a tailor made two day training course that involved exercises and demonstrations directly associated to the practices of the company and also utilising some data supplied to JBI from the information services company. This lead to greater delegate engagement in the training course and improved understanding of the processes involved in their jobs. To ensure that all of the delegates were fully informed on XSLT, several learning objectives were set:

• To understand how to use XSLT to create stylesheets and transform data sets and documents
• To understand how to format stylesheets
• To manage multiple input and output documents and sort information
• To create PDF documents using XSL-FO

Around 4 delegates from the information services company took part in the course, which was delivered remotely in their London offices. Feedback was collected to detail the successes and improvements that were found during the course:

“Packed in a lot of content, the instructor was very knowledgeable and engaging” AG, Head of Content

“Learning how to use XSL-FO will vastly improve my ability to transform the data into interesting PDF files.” AL, Content Editor

For further information, please see the links below:

XSLT training course

XSLT to XSLT2 training course

XML training course

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