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Re: What niche is XQuery targeting?

• To: XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: Re: What niche is XQuery targeting?
• From: Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@r...>
• Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 21:55:33 -0800
• In-reply-to: <D9B717CBA90F254DB3E5645D73CC158604AF1C19@R...>
• References: <D9B717CBA90F254DB3E5645D73CC158604AF1C19@R...>
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Soumitra Sengupta wrote:

> This is one of those few times I agree with Dare :-)) even though we
> work for the same company.  He points out one of the big challenges.
> Couple of comments:
> If we are querying over a bunch of back-end relational databases, why is
> XQuery better than some flavor of SQL?  At least the type system
> mismatch could be manageable.

It isn't better. The only reason I can think of to use XQuery in this 
situation is that you want to construct reasonably complex XML from the 
results, and even then you need to make some trade-offs. SQL will almost 
certainly be faster but require post-processing to construct the XML; 
XQuery will be easier to write.

XQuery is useful as a data integration language when the data sources do
not easily map to relational.

> Honestly, whether we use a SQL DQP or XQuery DQP is not the biggest
> problem.  Semantic and structural mismatches, data quality, policies
> around running arbitrary queries on mission critical data stores, data
> volume, updates, security and access control and metadata management are
> the bigger problems.

Agreed.

-- Ron

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: Query decomposition [was: What niche is XQuery targeting?]
    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>

• References:
  • RE: What niche is XQuery targeting?
    • From: "Soumitra Sengupta" <soumitrs@m...>

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