XML documents do not contain any formatting they are simply 

containers of structured information. (You'll notice that the sample code 

contains no font, table, or heading tags.) Once you have an XML schema, 

you can use Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) to display the 

information. In the way that Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) let you format 

HTML, XSL lets you format XML data. You can define styles, page 

elements, layout, and so forth in an XSL file and attach it to an XML file so 

that when a user views the XML data in a browser, the data is formatted 

according to whatever you've defined in the XSL file. The content (the 

XML data) and presentation (defined by the XSL file) are entirely separate, 

providing you with greater control over how your information appears on a 

web page. In essence, XSL is a presentation technology for XML, where the 

primary output is an HTML page.

Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) is a subset 

language of XSL that actually lets you display XML data on a web page, 

and  transform  it, along with XSL styles, into readable, styled information 

in the form of HTML. You can use Dreamweaver to create XSLT pages 

that let you perform XSL transformations using an application server or a 

browser. When you perform a server side XSL transformation, the server 

does the work of transforming the XML and XSL, and displaying it on the 

page. When you perform a client side transformation, a browser (such as 

Internet Explorer) does the work.

The approach you ultimately take (server side transformations versus 

client side transformations) depends on what you are trying to achieve as 

an end result, the technologies available to you, the level of access you have 

to XML source files, and other factors. Both approaches have their own 

benefits and limitations. For example server side transformations work in 

all browsers while client side transformations are restricted to modern 

browsers only (Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 8, Mozilla 1.8, and Firefox 

1.0.2). Server side transformations let you display XML data dynamically 

from your own server or from anywhere else on the web, while client side 

transformations must use XML data that is locally hosted on your own web 

server. Lastly, server side transformations require that you deploy your 

pages to a configured application server, while client side transformations 

only require access to a web server.

Learn about using XML and XSL with web pages 177