Comment by barefootliam

XQuery has a different focus from XSLT. XQuery doesn’t have apply-templates, the document-based implicit dispatch that is so central to XSLT, and it doesn’t have the multiple inheritance possible with overloading templates, but it is stronger in the area of modules, and it assumes (in design) an index, a database.

Programmers tend to prefer XQuery syntax, but note that XPath 3 moves XSLT in that direction too, and XSLT 4 will take it further.

The main strength of XSLT for me is that, together with XML, it enables people who do not consider themselves programmers to do advanced text processing.