Where would you recommend looking for information that contrasts XSLT and XFORMS? The debate centers on using XSLT or XFORMS by applications that need to present information to the user via the web. Is the difference simply that XFORMS may provide additional browser based validation functionality?
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The most common way XSLT has been used in a forms environment to date is by using XSLT to target the forms capabilities of HTML. These capabilities are very light resulting in a lot of custom coding - validations, form widgets etc. XForms by contrast, has a variety of higher level forms capabilities. Consequently, it reduces the amount of code that needs to be custom-developed to roll out rich forms. Note that XForms can be implemented in such a way that the server down-translates to HTML forms on the server side. I.e. there is no requirement for an XForms engine on the client side. Having said that, in the not-to-distant future a variety of applications - from browsers to office suites - will provide XForms functionality on the client side.
This was first published in December 2004
