Using XPath and XSL to Avoid Static Lookups

Most websites have to perform some lookups to translate a key to a value or to find static information about an entity. Usually this requires a database call, many application--level variables, or the LookupTable COM object. In some cases, however, the better solution is to load all your lookup data into an application--level DOM and use XPath to query the DOM to get the results required. This article, by Brad Palmer and Bart Gerardi, shows you the details on how to do this, as well as the reasons behind it and the cases in which it is and isn't appropriate.