XML/XSL Export Limitation

[Matt Haughton]

The Context

I'm looking to export some (about 20) fields from a FileMaker Database. This export consists of sorted/grouped records, 2 of the exported fields are summary fields that summarise across the grouped data.

The export contains close to 1,000,000 records, only about 50,000 of these end up being grouped together, so about 950,000 in the final data file.

The data is to be exported in XML format so that I can apply an XSL transform and get the final XML file into a format I need for the target system.

The Problem

When exporting without applying an XSL stylesheet this works fine (although it takes about 15-20 hours!). However when I apply a stylesheet the export gets right to the end and when it is finishing up it displays an XSL error.

This left me confused and more importantly without a data file after 15 hours processing. I've not run it with the XSL option on since then.

The XSL code does work, I've checked it many times and had it checked over, it is valid and works correctly on 10,000, 20,000 and 50,000 records.

I don't have the exact error code unfortunately. But before I go down the painful route of discovering the limit of XML that can be transformed, has anybody come across this limitation? Is it the XALAN or XERCES engines in FileMaker (it doesn't seem to be FM's Export engine as it exports fine in other formats and without XSL transform)? I'm using FM8.0v3 and a local (non-hosted) file, on XP SP2, does the OS or FM version have something to do with it?

Every test I do on this will take at least 15 hours processing time so not worth investigating from company's point of view, can anyone advise? Any extra information would be useful.