RE: [xml-dev] XQuery and DTD/Schema?

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Betty Harvey [mailto:harvey@eccnet.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 4:33 PM
> To: Dare Obasanjo
> Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: RE: [xml-dev] XQuery and DTD/Schema?


XQuery is still a working draft which means it has several months to
years before it stabilizes. The answers to your questions are in flux
but here are some attempts at answers. 

> That doesn't really answer my question.  Maybe I phrased it 
> wrong.  Is a W3C Schema required in order to use XQuery.  

No, but the primitive types in XQuery will be those from W3C XML Schema
(i.e. analogous to how the primitive types in XPath are number, boolean
and string)

> I 
> would imagine that Oracle and other XML aware database will 
> allow DTD's for validing and importing and exporting XML data 
> in and out.

I guess so, the future plans of our competitors is not my purvey. 

> I can include the W3C datatypes within a DTD, an XML parser 
> just won't validate that the datatypes are valid using an 
> 'off the shelf' XML parser.

I'm not sure what this statement means. Are you suggesting validating a
W3C XML schema with a DTD or...? 

> A lot of documents don't require datatyping (although they 
> are nice to have they aren't imperative).

True. 

> Does XQuery require a W3C Schema?  

Nope. 

>Does XQuery care?  

Yup. 

> Can I  use the datatyping and validating capability within my 
> database of choice if it supports XQuery.

This is a question for your database vendor of choice. 

> If I currently have a DTD and thousands possibly millions of 
> XML documents that conform to this DTD, why should I care 
> about converting my DTD to W3C Schema just to use XQuery?

You shouldn't have to and this is probably why the XQuery and XPath data
model document plans to define a mapping from DTDs to the XQuery Data
Model[0]. 

[0]http://www.w3.org/TR/query-datamodel/#IDASOVR

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