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RE: The limitations of XPath and navigation for XML database p

• From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>
• To: "'Ken North'" <kennorth@s...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 23:46:07 -0000

> 
> Another thread here reminded of about Michael David's recent article:

A disappointing read. It's a topic that deserves far better treatment than
this.

If he's going to claim that XPath is procedural when the rest of the world
claims it is declarative, then at least he ought to explain why he holds
this view, rather than simply stating it 20 times in 6 pages and hoping that
if he says it often enough the mud will stick. And all this stuff about
single-leg and multi-leg queries surely at least deserves an example to
illustrate what point he is trying to make. (I suspect what he's getting at
is that XPath 1.0 can't do joins - something that is fixed in XPath 2.0, and
even more so in XQuery. But who knows.)

There are legitimate criticisms to be made of XML as a database model and
XPath as a query language, but this kind of polemic - all opinion and no
reasoned argument - really doesn't deserve to be cited by anyone.

If you get as far as about page 8, you realize that it's all just a build-up
to let him advertise his own product - but I'm afraid he'd put me off by
then so I didn't read any further.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re[2]: [offtopic] The limitations of XPath and navigation for XML database processing
    • From: Dmitry Turin <dev3os@n...>

• References:
  • SQL instead of XQuery
    • From: Dmitry Turin <dev3os@n...>
  • Re: SQL instead of XQuery
    • From: "Andrzej Jan Taramina" <andrzej@c...>
  • The limitations of XPath and navigation for XML database processing
    • From: "Ken North" <kennorth@s...>