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This is an example of how parts of the ODM can be published in a dynamic way on an intranet website.
Typically, the user uses a servlet or JSP to select an ODM-XML file (e.g. based on a number of qualifications) from a database. The database can either be an object database (to be preferred) or a classic relational database. The XML is then retrieved by the servlet and through a very simple Java-program converted to a web page.
The style for the presentation is determined by the XSL-stylesheet, which itself is written in XML.

The current example shows how the "User" element from an ODM-XML file (*) that is transformed into a web page.

The applied XSL-stylesheet can be found here.

Users

Full Name	Shirley Williams
First Name	Shirley
Last Name	Williams
Organization	CDISC
Location	CDISC Headquarters
Full Name	John Smith, M.D.
First Name	John
Last Name	Smith
Organization	Roswell Park
Location	Roswell Park
Full Name	Jane Doe, M.D.
First Name	Jane
Last Name	Doe
Organization	Fred Hutchinson
Location	Fred Hutchinson

The stylesheet contains a number of interesting elements:

• First of all, one will notice that the HTML is written as XHTML, i.e. all tags are opened AND closed (Normal HTML is very tolerant for not closing tags) and all tags are lowercase. The latter is not a necessity in XSL, but I consider it as good practice.
• Secondly, this is a nice demonstration of how to make tables in an XSL-stylesheet
• The XSL itself contains a nice demonstration of XPath, i.e. searching a path through the document to find the reference of the LOCATION data. Notice that the LocationRef element does not contain the location itself, but only the reference. The XPath expression is then used to get the real value for the Location.
• Remark also that the stylesheet also contains a link to another stylesheet, i.e. a cascading stylesheet. The latter is automatically implemented during the transformation.

Remarks

• This stylesheet can also be used to show ODM XML files directly in MS Internet Explorer. MS IE5 and higher also render XML files if a reference is given within the XML file to the stylesheet. One should take care that the correct namespace for XSL is used, as the default namespace for direct viewing in MS IE5 (http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl) does not support all the necessary features of this stylesheet. For example: <xsl-variable> is not supported.
  Therefore we used the W3C default namespace (http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform ). This has the additional advantage that the XML file can also be transformed at the server side (e.g. servlets) with software like Xalan.

• Netscape users cannot view XML-files directly in the browser, even if the XML file contains a link to the XSL styleheet. Also XSL-files cannot be viewed directly with Netscape (what a shame !).

• (*) The presented file is still from the ODM v.1.1 draft (not the final version)

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