RE: XQuery -- Reinventing the Wheel?

[Evan Lenz <elenz@xyzfind.com>]

On Sat, 24 Feb 2001, Michael Rys wrote:

> It is true that if you have full recursion, that you can express the same
> queries as with templates. The difference from an optimization point of view
> are as follows, IMHO:
> 
> 1. Making the recursive processing explicit, the rule-base is hardcoded into
> the code. Thus, a compiler can do static analysis and optimizations. This is
> only partially true for template processing, mainly when your rule-base is
> not changing (which is the case for single XSLT template files, but probably
> not anymore for query systems based on template processing).

Huh? XSLT's processing model is such that all template rules, patterns,
and expressions are known at compile-time. They *cannot* change, so
nothing about them detracts from the processor's ability to do static
analysis and optimizations. There's nothing less static about implicit
recursion than explicit recursion.

> 
> 2. Since the explicit recursive processing is normally only used when no
> other mean is necessary, people will more likely write better optimizable
> expressions.

This point is at least defensible. I just disagree. Note that it's not a
technical reason for keeping template rules out of the language, but a
practical one. I would much prefer to address this issue by warning people
that using template rules may be slow (if that's in fact the case), rather
than taking away the ability to do so altogether.

Evan Lenz
XYZFind Corp.