Re: [xml-dev] XQuery 2019 IMap

["Liam R. E. Quin" <liam@fromoldbooks.org>]

Hans, sorry for a late reply.

On Tue, 2019-01-08 at 04:25 +0000, Hans-Juergen Rennau wrote:
> XQuery has the potential to change our thinking about structured
> information,

Or rather, we collectively have the potential to change our thinking,
and XQuery could be part of that.

In fact, thinking has to change around the declartive markup story and
around data and knowledge representation, not only around querying. In
particular, we need ot build systems that help information to cross
representational boundaries.

>  "XQuery supports multi-source, forking, discontinuous, conditional,
> generative navigation."LEMON CURRY? Exactly - multi-source, forking,
> discontinuous, conditional, generative navigation!

The question isn't, what does XQuery support, though. It's, what does
XQuery support that you don't get from JavaScript, node, HTML. What do
you get for $300/hr cnsultants that you don't get from $15/hr
programmers chained to their desks in a software factory?

> Using extension
> functions offered by BaseX (file:list and json:parse) which SHOULD be
> defined by XQuery 3.2.
json:parse, or ather fn:parse-json(), is indeed available in XQuery 3.1
(and XSLT 3 too). The file: module is from EXPath and is in XQuery and
XSLT engines.

> declare variable $docs :=
> $dirs ! normalize-space(.) ! tokenize(., ' ') ! 
>                           file:list(., true(), $fname) ! unparsed-
> text(.) ! json:parse(.);
> $docs//flights/_[departureTime > $time][$airport = (departureAirport,
> arrivalAirport)]
> /string-join((departureAirport, arrivalAirport, departureTime,
> arrivalTime), ',')

i once interviewed a programmer for a job writing code for contracts.
he said that he loved to write really really long Unix shell pipelines.
He didn't get the job. What i needed was someone who lived to write
really really clear scripts that could easily be changed.

Your sample query is interesting, though, if you think of it as a sort
of SPARQL-like construct. When SPARQL was being developed, the XML
Query Working Group sent a formal review that included a note tha it
needed expressions, for exactly this sort of use case; years later,
SPARQL 1.1 added expressions.

And this sort of crossover is an example of where i think the XML
community could rebrand and provide real value.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin, https://www.delightfulcomputing.com/
Available for XML/Document/Information Architecture/XSLT/
XSL/XQuery/Web/Text Processing/A11Y training, work & consulting.
Web slave for vintage clipart http://www.fromoldbooks.org/