A transformation is specified by a "stylesheet" or "transform" document:

<xsl:stylesheet version='1.0' xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <!-- your rules here -->
</xsl:stylesheet>

or

<xsl:transform version='1.0' xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <!-- your rules here -->
</xsl:transform>

The choice of 'stylesheet' or 'transform' has no affect on the outcome according to the XSLT recommendation.

Applications may interpret 'stylesheet' differently from 'transform' in terms of:

• whether they run the transformation

• what they do with the results.