Implementing catalog clearinghouses with XML and XSL
Andrew V. Royappa · 1999
A catalog clearinghouse is defined as an electronic commerce entity that provides a common web-based storefront to a group of merchants.This paper considers the implementation of a specific kind of clearinghouse: one that hosts catalogs for a large number of similar merchants (e.g., thousands of restaurant menus).A standard architecture is described.followed by a novel architecture that uses the emerging Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) standards for data storage, search and graphical presentation.For large clearinghouses, the new architecture realizes significant benefits in terms of presentation flexibility, powerful search capabilities and increased performance.XML and XSL are used at the client side for flexible presentations with low maintenance costs, while XML and traditional RDBMS techniques are combined at the server for searching and business logic.Detailed examples of XML document type definitions and XML structured data are given, along with details on the recursive transformation of XML into HTML, using rule-based XSL style sheets.