Re: [xml-dev] The use of XML syntax in XML Query

[Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@softwareag.com>]

At 01:51 PM 1/3/2002 +0000, David Carlisle wrote:

>If Xquery is designed to be used in that way, why does it use
>syntax like <aaa> .. </aaa>, or &#xe9; that is designed to look like XML
>but which if used quoted in an XML document doesn't look so much like
>XML at all? If the XML Query processor was expecting an XML document
>rather than a string to be extracted out of your XML document example
>the XML syntax that appears in the XML query would be encoded in the XML
>document as XML constructs not just some big cdata section or a mass of
>&lt;.

Even XML syntax, when used quoted in an XML document, "doesn't look so much 
like XML at all".

I think it is reasonable to design XQuery with the expectation that most 
people will have keyboard drivers and displays that can handle their native 
languages, and that queries can either be written in Unicode or converted 
to Unicode.

Of course, there is always the biblical researcher in Taiwan who is working 
with Greek and Hebrew texts and German and English commentaries (I am 
thinking of a specific person who I talked to at a conference). This kind 
of person is simply going to install a lot of keyboard drivers and fonts or 
play games with character references. I don't think this person represents 
the 80/20 - we have to provide a solution that covers this case, but this 
is not the solution we need to optimize.

A more serious objection David might raise is that in the current 
definition, there is no XML format that all XQuery processors are required 
to recognize as a query. That would be simple to specify. Is it worth doing?

Jonathan