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.

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) to store the XSL template.

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.

The XML infrastructure identifies the version number of the latest template instance (in this case, 1). The XML infrastructure retrieves the corresponding row from this table 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 retrieves the row from this table and downloads the corresponding document to Ronan Rooney's machine;
• 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 this table with the version number 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).

Person John Smith takes legal action against the organization. To support the organization's defense, User Ronan Rooney re-prints the letter that was sent to John Smith. The XML infrastructure retrieves the data for the letter from XML Archive Document and from it identifies the version of the template which was originally used to print the letter (version 1, containing the typographical error). The XML infrastructure retrieves version 1 of the template from this table and formats the letter exactly as it was sent to John Smith.

Technical Notes

For more information see the Cúram XML Infrastructure Guide.