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Re: XPath 2.0 - how much of XQuery should it include?

• To: AndrewWatt2000@a...,xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: XPath 2.0 - how much of XQuery should it include?
• From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>
• Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 06:21:26 -0700
• Cc: michael.h.kay@n...
• In-reply-to: <8b.180abb01.2a0e49d3@a...>

At 06:17 AM 5/11/2002 -0400, AndrewWatt2000@a... wrote:

>I have asked you what is the vision for XPath and each time you have (in 
>the posts I have seen) failed to answer.
>
>How am I to interpret that? These are some possibilities that come to mind:
>1. A clear strategy exists but you decline/refuse to share it. Impression 
>given - W3C does not consider us significant enough to have access to that 
>information.
>2. No clear strategy exists. Impression given - you don't want us to 
>realise how ad hoc all this is.
>
>There are other variants but hopefully you get the idea.

[[ !!! SNIP !!! ]

>So, I will ask you once more: "What is the vision/strategy for XPath 2.0?".

Actually, I have responded to requests on this topic, pointing you to the 
XPath 2.0 requirements document. This is largely a set of requests that 
XSLT users have made for extensions to XPath, as I understand it. Since 
XQuery provides these features, XPath has been taking them up. That's an 
incremental, rather than a revolutionary vision. I'm not convinced that 
current XPath users need anything revolutionary. However, support for types 
*is* one of the features that has been requested.

The main places I see XPath being used today are in XSLT patterns, for 
querying XML stored in databases, and as a sublanguage in various 
home-grown systems. I have not seen a lot of commercial support for 
XPointer to date.

Another *very* important vision for XPath 2.0 is to have a more orthogonal 
language, getting rid of a lot of the complicated special casing in XPath 
1.0 that made it difficult to use as a subset of XQuery.

Jonathan

• Follow-Ups:
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    • From: David Carlisle <davidc@n...>

• References:
  • Re: XPath 2.0 - how much of XQuery should it include?
    • From: AndrewWatt2000@a...

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