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RE: The use of XML syntax in XML Query

• To: "'Henry S. Thompson'" <ht@c...>,"'David Carlisle'" <davidc@n...>
• Subject: RE: The use of XML syntax in XML Query
• From: "Michael Kay" <michael.h.kay@n...>
• Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 15:00:31 -0000
• Cc: <www-xml-query-comments@w...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <f5b666jzh9y.fsf@c...>
• Reply-to: <michael.h.kay@n...>

Henry Thompson:
> I think there's a confusion here.  XPath and XQuery are expression
> languages.  There's no such thing as an 'XQuery document' as such, as
> far as I understand.  You can embed XPath and/or XQuery expressions in
> XML documents any way you like....

Of course you can: but has it been designed to make it easy?

If XQuery were designed to make it easy to embed a query in an XML document,
then it would not use things that look like XML character references, it
would not use things that look like XML comments, and it would not use
things that look like XML CDATA sections. Rather it would (a) avoid using
constructs that clash with XML markup (like ampersand characters and the
dreaded "]]>"), and (b) exploit the XML lexical apparatus rather than
duplicating it.

I worry that we're going to see some nasty problems when people try to
generate XQuery expressions using XSLT, when the XSLT processor thinks it is
generating XML but isn't really... It'll be a field day for
disable-output-escaping with all its horrors.

Mike Kay

• References:
  • Re: The use of XML syntax in XML Query
    • From: ht@c... (Henry S. Thompson)

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