XPath and XSLT

The topic provides an overview of the concepts of XPath and XSLT.

XML is an excellent medium for packaging and exchanging data. An XML document is a flat text file that contains data in a structured format. Usually, this information is retrieved by making a tree representation of the XML document.
An XML document tree is made up of nodes. Different types of nodes that can constitute an XML document are:

• Root nodes
  
• Element nodes
  
• Text nodes
  
• Attribute nodes
  
• Comment nodes
  
• Processing instruction nodes
  
• Namespace nodes
  
  Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) is an XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents into other XML or documents that can be read by human beings. For more information on XSLT, refer to Understanding XSLT.
  
  XPath is a language for addressing parts of an XML document. It is designed to be used by XSLT. For more information on XPath, refer to Understanding XPath.
  
  For best practices on using XPath, refer to Optimizing XPath Expression Usage.
  
  Though Process Platform supports most of the features provided by XSLT, some features are not supported. For the list of features/specs that are not supported in Process Platform, refer to XSLT Features that not supported in Process Platform and a few limitations of XSLT in Process Platform. For more information, refer to Limitations.