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Re: The use of XML syntax in XML Query

• To: Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@r...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: The use of XML syntax in XML Query
• From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
• Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 13:51:18 -0500
• Cc: David Carlisle <davidc@n...>, www-xml-query-comments@w...
• In-reply-to: <3C34A190.B45E11FD@r...>
• References: <200201031146.LAA19272@p...> <f5b666jzh9y.fsf@c...> <p04330103b85a221de51e@[192.168.254.4]><3C34A190.B45E11FD@r...>

At 10:23 AM -0800 1/3/02, Ronald Bourret wrote:


>Why is XQuery sacrosanct in this respect? You can't paste code or SQL
>statements into an XML document without escaping stuff, so why should
>XQuery be any different?

Nobody's going to confuse Java or SQL with XML. People will confuse 
XQuery with XML.

Languages designed for processing XML documents should either be XML 
themselves (XSLT, Schemas) or totally non-XML (XPath) but in-between 
these two poles lies disaster. Even XPath sometimes causes me 
problems with <, &, and ". I can at least recognize the problems when 
they arise, curse once, and fix them. But it takes most XSLT users a 
lot longer than this to fix these problems. XQuery as proposed will 
be far worse.

>The point of the XQuery surface syntax is to
>provide an easily readable format for querying XML documents. It does
>this. If you want an XML format of an XQuery statement that you can cut
>and paste, use XQueryX.
>

I want both at the same time, and see no reason I can't have that. 
:-) For the record, I specifically reject any syntax so complicated 
that I can't write it in BBEdit. i.e. no special tools should be 
necessary to generate an XQuery. I'm smart enough to write SQL and 
XSLT by hand. Why does XQuery need to be any more complex than this? 
That rules XQueryX as it exists now, but it could be fixed if that 
were considered desirable by the working group. I'm also flexible 
enough to accept a completely non-XML syntax. But I can't imagine 
trying to teach and explain this wishy-washy, in-between mess that's 
being proposed.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001)           |
|              http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/books/bible2/              |
|   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/   |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/     |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+

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