  XSLT is a standard rule-based programming language for expressing
transformations of XML data. The language is currently in transition from
version 1.0 to 2.0. In order to understand the computational consequences of
this transition, we restrict XSLT to its pure tree-transformation capabilities.
Under this focus, we observe that XSLT~1.0 was not yet a computationally
complete tree-transformation language: every 1.0 program can be implemented in
exponential time. A crucial new feature of version~2.0, however, which allows
nodesets over temporary trees, yields completeness. We provide a formal
operational semantics for XSLT programs, and establish confluence for this
semantics.
