Using Prolog for Transforming XML Documents

TL;DR

This paper presents a Prolog-based approach for transforming XML documents, including an interpreter for parsing and serializing XML, and compares its effectiveness and features with XSLT.

Contribution

It introduces a tuProlog-styled interpreter for XML transformation and provides a comparative analysis with XSLT based on various criteria.

Findings

Prolog can effectively parse and serialize XML documents.

Prolog's features differ from XSLT in transformation expressibility.

The paper identifies scenarios where Prolog offers advantages over XSLT.

Abstract

Proponents of the programming language Prolog share the opinion Prolog is more appropriate for transforming XML-documents as other well-established techniques and languages like XSLT. In order to clarify this position this work proposes a tuProlog-styled interpreter for parsing XML-documents into Prolog-internal lists and vice versa for serialising lists into XML-documents. Based on this implementation a comparison between XSLT and Prolog follows. First, criteria are researched, such as considered language features of XSLT, usability and expressibility. These criteria are validated. Second, it is assessed when Prolog distinguishes between input and output parameters towards reversible transformation.