xml-dev - Another XML query language (was Re: XML-QL)

[Joe Lapp <jlapp@webMethods.com>]

Here's another markup query language that is actually quite mature.  It is
called the webMethods Object Model (WOM), which is not to be confused with
APIs such as DOM (WOM is a string-based query language).

We've been using it in our products for for than a year and a half now.
WIDL depends on it.  You can think of WIDL as an application of a query
language.  WOM was originally developed for HTML, but has proven more
valuable with XML.  We use our latest incarnation of WIDL with XML all the
time; WIDL is a language for crossing the tree/data-structure barrier that
exists between flow object representations and programming languages.
(I'll be giving a speech on WIDL for XML at the XML 98 conference.)

I've put some pages up on our site.  These pages are from our product
documentation.  They probably aren't as accessible in this form, since I
went through and removed the product tutorial pieces.  Hopefully I didn't
leave to many links dangling.  The URL:

  http://www.webMethods.com/technology/wom.html

At 09:41 AM 9/1/98 -0700, Lisa Rein wrote:
>
>So far I've got:
>
>SQL (of course)
>XPointer
>XML-QL
>XQL?
>Appel...
>
>more?
>
>thanks everybody,
>
>lisa
>
>Jonathan Robie wrote:
>> 
>> At 11:19 AM 9/1/98 +0100, Michael Kay wrote:
>> 
>> >My immediate reaction is to compare this not with SQL, but
>> >with the new XSL "tree construction" facilities which
>> >essentially provide an XML transformation language. I don't
>> >have time to do a detailed point-by-point comparison but it
>> >would certainly be a useful exercise. Conceptually they have
>> >many similarities but there are many points of detail where
>> >one is stronger than the other. I would think it is entirely
>> >possible to devise a language that combines the power of
>> >both without a significant loss of usability.
>> 
>> In fact, at Metastructures 98 I presented a language called XQL that uses a
>> syntax very similar to XSL Patterns. This language was developed primarily
>> by Joe Lapp of webMethods and me. Like XML-QL, XQL is declarative.
>> 
>> One of the significant differences between XML-QL and XQL is that XQL can
>> do both hierarchy and sequence. The fundamental structural relationships in
>> XQL are:
>> 
>> o       hierarchy
>> 
>>         o       parent/child
>>         o       ancestor/descendant
>> 
>> o       sequence
>> 
>>         o       precedes
>>         o       immediately precedes
>> 
>> o       position
>> 
>>         o       subscripts
>>         o       ranges
>> 
>> I think sequence is pretty important in documents, though it is not
>> important in many data-oriented systems. XML-QL's heritage in relational
>> theory has caused it to ignore sequence.
>> 
>> Jonathan
>> 
>> jonathan@texcel.no
>> Texcel Research
>> http://www.texcel.no
>> 
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--
Joe Lapp, Senior Engineer | jlapp@webMethods.com
webMethods, Inc.          | Voice: 703-267-1726
http://www.webMethods.com |   Fax: 703-352-0370

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