Re:XML - I don't mind (Score 1)

The important thing to remember about XSLT is that it is a declarative language, not an iterative one. In other words, when you create an XSLT stylesheet, you're not specifying a list of things you want to happen in a specific order - instead, you're defining how you want the result to look. Many programmers (especially the scripting types) are trying to use XSLT as a replacement for iterative langages, and getting frustrated when they can't get the results they want easily.

Personally, I use XSLT for simple presentation tasks - that's it. If I need to do pivots, aggregation, or anything else that's relatively complex, I write a little bit of code in an iterative language to take care of it for me. Yes, I lose some platform portability, but on the flip side the code I create isn't completely inscrutable.