DVSL (Declarative Velocity Style Language) is a tool modeled after XSLT and is intended for general XML transformations using the Velocity Template Language as the templating language for the transformations. The key differences are that it incorporates easy access to Java objects and allows you to use the Velocity template language and it's features for expressing the transformation templates.

DVSL steals two of the best features of XSLT:

• It uses a declarative syntax like XSLT.
• Document control and selection is based on XPath.

DVSL differs from XSLT in a few ways

• DVSL's template language is Velocity, so conventional Velocity syntax is used to get and set data, to perform looping and flow control, etc. All features of VTL are available.
• Because DVSL is based on Velocity, it offers a very tight binding to Java objects. This means that it's easy to access other data sources from within the DVSL stylesheet, using conventional method call syntax, allowing you to integrate, collect, and transform with and to outside data like databases, calculation libraries, etc

The current status is best described as 'development'. The code is being used in quasi-production settings, and is maturing.

With its recently improved Ant task support, DVSL is very usable standalone for styling and transformation of XML.

Further, DVSL is supported by :

• Jakarta Turbine's 'Stratum' services subprojects
• Maverick web appliation framework.

Nightly snapshots of the DVSL CVS are available here.

Access to the DVSL CVS repository is available :

• Online via ViewCVS in your browser.
• Using a cvs client