• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Are Updates really needed in XQuery?
• From: "Brian Vickery" <macacos@l...>
• Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 05:56:53 -0800
• Importance: Normal

I have a simple question, "Why do we need updates as part of the XQuery
language at all?"

I have read the latest XQuery Update proposal (from the "XQuery Update
Proposal" by Patrick Lehti) and the older XUpdate WD.  I come from a
database background and view updates as imperative to the XQuery/XPath
language, but can't state "why".  I'm getting a lot of grief regarding
having Updates at all.  The types of "inserts" and "deletes" typically shown
are just adding/deleting a document from a "collection" (if collections
existed and they should IMHO).

Some examples are:

1.  If I have a collection of XML invoices why would I ever want to update
these?  An invoice is written once and never changed!

2.  If I have a document centric collection of XML document I would most
likely version each document, thus why do we need updates?

3.  If I have all my business contacts (companies I do business with) stored
in an XML collection, why wouldn't I just do a complete replace if I wanted
to change a companies name or address?

Does anyone have any real life scenarios/business cases that "MUST" have
updates?

thanks,

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Are Updates really needed in XQuery?
    • From: Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@r...>
  • Re: Are Updates really needed in XQuery?
    • From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>
  • RE: Are Updates really needed in XQuery?
    • From: "Michael Kay" <michael.h.kay@n...>
  • Re: Are Updates really needed in XQuery?
    • From: "Dare Obasanjo" <kpako@y...>

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