[ANN] BaseX 9.3: The Winter Edition

[=?UTF-8?Q?Christian_Gr=C3=BCn?= <christian.gruen@gmail.com>]

Dear all,

We are glad to announce version 9.3 of BaseX, our XML framework,
database system and XQuery 3.1 processor:

  http://basex.org/

The focus has been put on in-depth optimizations of complex XQuery
code and faster processing of RESTXQ web applications:

RESTXQ
- seamless streaming of custom responses to the client
- Request Module: bind attributes to current request
- better support for the OPTIONS and HEAD methods
- trace output is now stored in the database logs
- enforce premature HTTP response with web:error
- optional GZIP compression of HTTP responses
- server-side forwarding with web:forward

USER INTERFACES
- GUI: project view: skip directories with .ignore file
- GUI: project view: do now follow symbolic links
- DBA: user panel updated to show user info
- DBA: faster processing of log entries

STORAGE
- hot fix for replacing single documents with namespaces
- improved XQuery processing of binary resources
- ADDCACHE: faster caching of single documents
- WITHDB: less locking when using fn:doc

XQUERY FUNCTIONS
- user:info/user:update-info: process user-specific data
- db:open-id, db:open-pre: support for multiple ids
- file:descendants: return descendant file paths
- inspect:type: return type of a value as string
- db:alter-backup: rename database backups
- xslt:transform: support for catalog files

XQUERY PERFORMANCE
- merge of adjacent/redundant steps in paths and predicates
- removal of redundant switch, typeswitch and catch clauses
- interruption of side-effecting code (Files Modul etc.)
- fn:count: pre-evaluation of zero-or-one arguments
- faster processing of alternative steps: a/(b,c)
- rewriting of paths to simple map expressions
- inlining of values in simple map expressions
- flattening of nested simple map expressions
- rewriting of lists to union expressions
- removal of superfluous predicates

For a more comprehensive list of added and updated features. please
check out our documentation: http://docs.basex.org/.

Your feedback is welcome as usual.

Have fun with the new release,
Your BaseX Team