Re: XML Querying Alternatives (was RE: XQuery - The truth comes out!)

[Steve Muench <Steve.Muench@oracle.com>]

| Thanks for bringing up SQLX ... Can anyone comment (officially,
| unofficially, publicly or privately) about how they see XPath/XSLT/XQuery
| and SQLX relating to one another?

I'm not directly participating for Oracle, but I've forwarded your
question to our rep who is. Likely both XML Schema and XPath
would play a role in extending SQL99 to more elegantly handle XML,
but it's too early to say at this point what SQLX "looks" like.

| The RDBMS vendors seem to be involved in both the XQuery and SQLX efforts
| ... are they hedging their bets, or is it just too early to tell whether the
| specs will compete or not?

We're certainly participating in both. RDBMS vendors and ORDBMS
vendors have spent years tuning the query optimizers and query-rewriting
capabilities of their engines. If new query syntaxes become
popular in the customer base, I'd imagine what lots of the existing
database vendors want to make sure is that any query in a new
syntax could be efficiently rewritten into a query that their
existing engines and optimizers can process well. With our heavy
investment into both SQL- and XML-related technologies, it makes
sense for us to participate in both. 

| Is it safe to assume that SQLX.org is "by
| invitation only", or is wider participation solicited?

It's being done as part of the ANSI SQL standards activity.
My uneducated guess is that any member of ANSI could be a
potential participant...

______________________________________________________________
Steve Muench, Lead XML Evangelist & Consulting Product Manager
BC4J & XSQL Servlet Development Teams, Oracle Rep to XSL WG
Author "Building Oracle XML Applications", O'Reilly
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/orxmlapp/