What is the difference between the Tamino passthru servlet & the XSLT server extension? On the website it says that the XSLT server extension performs the transformation in Tamino server, whereas the passthru servlet does it in the web server. That’s all.

When would you choose 1 over the other? I can’t really tell what is the difference.

In theory it is best to process the data as close as possible to the Tamino server. What this means is that there is as little transmission of data as possible (just think large documents). Next best is the web server - this involves data transfer on the same machine. Worst would be at the client as this typically involves data transfer across an intranet or internet.

So the preferred data transfer ordering would be: in process (Tamino server), out of process (web server), out of machine (client).

Hopefully this makes the possible scenarios slightly clearer.

Thanks. Can I use the XSLT server extension to do transformation & return a HTML document like what the Passthru’ servlet does? It seems that 1 of the known limitations of the server extension is that the result returned must be well-formed XML. HTML will cause errors.

Guess what I’m trying to find out is the difference in functionality between the 2.

The following aspects are relevant in this context:
1) configuration

2) load balancing
3) functionality

Sorry for the incomplete reply before - hit the wrong key

The following aspects are relevant here:
1) configuration
- the passthru servlet requires a servlet engine like JSERV

2) load balancing
3) functionality
- the passthru servlet

Sorry for the 2nd incomplete reply before - hit the wrong key again
I once learned that an intelligent person can be identified based on the fact that
the same error will not be performed twice

The following aspects are relevant here when comparing the passthru servlet and the
Tamino XSLT server extension:

1) installation/configuration
- the passthru servlet requires a servlet engine like JSERV or similar
thus requireing more installation effort
2) load balancing
- the passtru servlet is executed with the web server whereas the XSLT server extension
executes in the
3) functionality
- the passthru servlet allows to retrieve the stylesheet from any URL
- as of today the XSLT server extension has one important drawback: the result of the
stylesheet-based transformation
(a) is wrapped into Tamino’s reponse wrapper
(b) must be wellformed XML
(c) the mimetype of the result cannot be set (e.g. to image/svg+xml thus causing a
browser to render the result as SVG)
Drawbacks (a) and (c) hopefully will be solved in the next Tamino release.
The passthru servlet suffers of (c) as well - AFAIK a solution based on the media-type
attribute of xsl:output has not yet been offered for download
- with respect to caching of precompiled stylesheets both infrastructures offer comparable
functionality
4) network traffic
- depending on the input data of the stylesheet-based transformation it may save some
network traffic to use the XSLT server extension.

I hope that helps a bit
Uli

Thanks Uli. It seems that the server extension has a better advantage over the servlet as it is executed in the Tamino server & is also easier to install as compared to the servlet.

However, since the result is wrapped in Tamino’s response wrapper consisting of ino:response & xql:result tags & it also has to be well-formed XML, it seems not possible for me to use this extension to return a HTML result. Are there ways to work around these limitations?