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Re: The use of XML syntax in XML Query

• To: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@s...>,ht@c... (Henry S. Thompson), David Carlisle <davidc@n...>
• Subject: Re: The use of XML syntax in XML Query
• From: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>
• Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 11:49:47 -0500
• Cc: www-xml-query-comments@w..., xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <5.1.0.14.0.20020103103609.044efda0@s...>
• References: <f5b666jzh9y.fsf@s...><200201031146.LAA19272@p...><f5b666jzh9y.fsf@c...><5.1.0.14.0.20020103103609.044efda0@s...>

At 10:46 AM -0500 1/3/02, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>At 10:09 AM 1/3/2002 -0500, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
>>There are two ways to fix this:
>>
>>1. The XSLT solution: Make all XQueries complete, well-formed, XML documents
>
>XQueryX does that. Personally, I'm not sure that XQueryX is 
>something that users would want to write, so it is not the solution 
>to David's problem.
>

I agree, but that's because in large part XQueryX was deliberately 
not designed as a human authorable, human-readable syntax. I think 
XQueryX could be redone in a more user-friendly form if that were 
desired.

>>2. The XPath solution: Make all XQueries look nothing like XML 
>>documents; i.e. no tags, no elements, no attributes
>
>Computed element constructor syntax allows this. Here is Henry's 
>example done in computed element constructor syntax, where the 
>wrapping element is in the XML document, and nothing in the query 
>per se looks like XML:
>
><myQR>
>element bib
>{
>    for $b in document("http://www.bn.com")/bib/book
>    where $b/publisher = "Addison-Wesley" and $b/@year > 1991
>    return
>      element livre
>      {
>         attribute ann&#xe9;e { $b/@year },
>         element cr&#xe9;ateur { $b/author },
>         $b/title
>      }
>}
></myQR>
>

I haven't seen this before. It does look like a possible solution. 
However, you still need to eliminate the non-computed element 
constructor syntax, which will still cause all the problems of user 
confusion on its own, even if a non-confusing alternative exists.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001)           |
|              http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/books/bible2/              |
|   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/   |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/     |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+

• References:
  • The use of XML syntax in XML Query
    • From: David Carlisle <davidc@n...>
  • Re: The use of XML syntax in XML Query
    • From: ht@c... (Henry S. Thompson)
  • Re: The use of XML syntax in XML Query
    • From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@s...>

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