XSLT (Style Sheets) versus Scripts (PHP and Perl)

Style Sheets, thought about in simplest terms, are a way to show data. There are data feeds available such as Amazon.com’s Product Feed. Style Sheets allow a website to display and search this product information and even instantiate an item sale from web links that return data (in XML format).

Scripts can be considered a set of processes used to show AND manipulate data. Using the same Amazon.com Product Feed example, scripts can be used to search and parse this (XML) web data, and create shopping carts or direct item purchases.

XSLT (Style Sheets) Pros
• Little effort needed to install.
• Web Server load is minimized.
XSLT Cons
• Relatively stateless. (No good shopping cart functionality)
• Search Engines don’t index all the products.

Scripts (PHP, Perl, etc…) Pros
• Dynamic content is easier to provide.
• Session variables allow the maintenance of state (Shopping Carts can be Created).
• Search engines will index products.
Scripts Cons
• Slightly more difficult to install.
• More server resources needed.

If you are a beginner and don’t expect multiple sell more than one item to the same customer at the same time, or expect for your website to grow to hundreds of dollars worth of transactions a month then XSLT might be the better choice.

If you are an advanced user and want to tweak every bit of functionality towards customers and bandwidth/processing is not a strict concern (it isn’t on most servers) then scripts is what you want.

For those interested in looking for more you should try...
http://www.associate-advocate.websbywes.com
It has many links to both server-side scripts and stylesheets