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Re: bohemians, gentry

• To: Norman Walsh <ndw@n...>,xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: bohemians, gentry
• From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>
• Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 16:33:26 -0500
• In-reply-to: <87of8132mw.fsf@n...>
• References: <200212041939.OAA24079@m...><200212041939.OAA24079@m...>

At 04:17 PM 12/4/2002 -0500, Norman Walsh wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>/ John Cowan <jcowan@r...> was heard to say:
>[...]
>| Again, the mere *provision* of typing metadata does not prevent such reuse.
>| However, if *standard tools* assume that the metadata is sound, then
>| transgressive reuse may indeed be made difficult.  Obviously, purely lexical
>| tools are not affected, but tools based on XQuery/XPath2/XSLT2 will not
>| be purely lexical in this sense (whereas XPath1/XSLT1 are).
>
>Taking the specific case of XQuery/XPath2/XSLT2, I'm not sure I see
>the problem. Given
>
><baz>
><foo n="1">Network Drive</foo>
><bar moo="0902">01803</bar>
></baz>
>
>I might write a template that matches those elements in a purely
>lexical way.
>
>   <xsl:template match="baz">...</xsl:template>

I agree with Norm.

XQuery is a strongly typed language, but it is designed to allow untyped 
and typed data to be used together gracefully. In XQuery, you do have to 
cast if data has a datatype that prohibits a specific kind of operation, 
but generally not if the data is untyped. The type information available in 
a query depends greatly on whether schemas have been imported into the query.

XQuery can work on well-formed XML, XML governed by DTDs, or XML governed 
by XML Schema. One query can involve data from all three kinds of XML.

I think John Cowan's text implies that there might be problems with reuse 
if there are datatypes in the data and XQuery is being used to process it. 
I would be interested in seeing some concrete examples that illustrate this 
point.

Jonathan

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• References:
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    • From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
  • Re: bohemians, gentry
    • From: Norman Walsh <ndw@n...>

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