[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

XQuery on Binary XML?

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: XQuery on Binary XML?
• From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>
• Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 16:28:45 -0500
• User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9 (Windows/20041103)

OK, we now have the ultimate heresy. Make XML binary, give it a native 
programming language, and in one sense we're back to what we had with 
object oriented programming, except we have a functional language 
instead of an object oriented one.

But...this binary representation has a native serialization, and is 
easily interchanged as text. Or as binary, for that matter. Each node 
could have its own binary format, with standard binary or text-based 
formats for interchange.

Of course, queries might need to operate on several binary formats - 
that used for binary interchange of web messages, the internal format of 
an XML store, a text-based XML document, an XML view of a relational 
database - so you might have several implementations of XQuery, with 
mediation among them.

To the extent that the binary XML is not interchanged, this is merely an 
internal optimization. But distributed XML pipelines are also important 
in some organizations.

So where is this all going?

Jonathan

Dana wrote:
> In theory you are perfectly right. Each tool has strengths and 
> weaknesses and it would be great to mix and match.
> 
> But unless implemented correctly this can yield to a performance 
> catastrophe.
> 
> Unless ALL tools are implemented to work on the same physical 
> representation for XML, you'll spend all your time copying and 
> converting the data between various physical formats (e..g. one 
> consumes and produces SAX, the other one expects a DOM and the last 
> one wants a JSR 173).

Wolfgang Hoschke wrote:

> watch out for XQuery directly executed over binary xml) [!!SNIP!!]
> for the most important use cases we either a) mostly eliminate
> converting or b) make converting extremely fast. The common physical
> representation for all of this is XOM.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: XQuery on Binary XML?
    • From: david.lyon@c...
  • Re: XQuery on Binary XML?
    • From: Wolfgang Hoschek <whoschek@l...>

• Prev by Date: Re: XML-aware programming language?
• Next by Date: Re: What niche is XQuery targeting?
• Previous by thread: Medical Banking Institute Adds Speakers; Early Bird Rate Extended <ed/>
• Next by thread: Re: XQuery on Binary XML?
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread