Most organizations have a requirement that (for legal reasons) correspondence from the organization must be reproducible in the original format with the original content intact.

Each XSL stylesheet/template may undergo a number of changes, e.g. to correct errors or conform to new requirements. However, an old version of a stylesheet/template cannot be changed directly (as this would prevent the correct re-printing of documents formatted using that template) - instead a new version is created.

A row on this table holds the version number of the most recent version of the template and its editorial status.

Example

You implement some new functionality that requires a new XSL template for printing correspondence to a Person. User Ronan Rooney creates a new XSL template for this type of correspondence and uploads it. A row is created on this table with a version number of 1.

User Ronan Rooney then uses your new functionality to format and print a letter to Person John Smith. The Cúram Server retrieves data about John Smith and passes it to the XML infrastructure, together with the 'ID code' for the row on this table.

The XML infrastructure retrieves the row from this table and from it identifies the version number of the latest template instance (in this case, 1). The XML infrastructure retrieves the corresponding XSL Template Instance row and uses it to format John Smith's data into a printable document. The XML infrastructure then prints this document and User Ronan Rooney puts the printed document into an envelope and mails it to John Smith.

User Ronan Rooney then notices a typographical error in the XSL template. He:

• 'checks out' the template; the XML infrastructure updates the row on this table to show that the template is checked out;
• edits the XSL template to correct the typographical error; and
• 'checks in' his changes to the XSL template; the XML infrastructure creates a new row on XSL Template Instance with the version number 2, and updates the row on XSL Template to show that the template is no longer checked out and that the latest version is 2.

User Ronan Rooney uses your new functionality to format and print a letter to Person Mary Smith. The XML infrastructure uses the latest version of the XSL template to format and print the letter (version 2, containing the correction to the typographical error).

Technical Notes

The version of a template that is edited is not always the latest one. Any previous version can be edited and (when it is checked-in it) will become the new 'latest version'.

New documents are always formatted using the latest version of the corresponding template.

Each row on this table stores an 'ID code' to permit the row to be identified by application logic and retrieved.

For more information see the Cúram XML Infrastructure Guide.