Re: XQuery -- Reinventing the Wheel?

["Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@home.com>]

<Jonathan.Robie@SoftwareAG-USA.com> wrote



> Brian Miller wrote:
>
> > Jonathan.Robie@SoftwareAG-USA.com wrote:
> > >
> > > "An entirely new syntax" seems to be a bit of an
> > > exaggeration.  In fact, XPath 2.0 will become that
> > > common semantic and syntactic core for both
> > > languages [XSLT and XQuery].
> >
> > How awkward that XPath (the "common semantic and
> > syntactic core" of our pending XML revolution) is
> > itself not expressed as XML.
>
> Actually, I do not see this as awkward. In SQL, the query language is not
> expressed in tables and rows. In XQuery, the query language is not expressed
> in XML. Why is this a problem?
>
It's hard enough to write complex queries and get them working correctly with
decent performance.  If a query's guts are obscured by excessive (xml) syntax,
it will be ***much*** harder.  So I am sympathetic to the use of a non-xml
language.

My only concern is that beyond doubt, people will want to include XQL queries
in xml documents.  Perhaps they would be passed along using SOAP, for example
(yes, I know that SOAP could carry non-xml data, but it's not so convenient to
do that).  So how are we going to do that?

Maybe CDATA sections will turn out to be the way.

Cheers,

Tom P