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RE: Fwd: War of Attrition (was: Underwhelmed (WAS:

• To: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@m...>,xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Fwd: War of Attrition (was: Underwhelmed (WAS: XOM micro tutorial))
• From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>
• Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 13:31:03 -0400
• In-reply-to: <8BD7226E07DDFF49AF5EF4030ACE0B7E0696F9D6@r...>

At 09:19 AM 9/25/2002 -0700, Dare Obasanjo wrote:

>There aren't 15 implementations of XQuery in compliance with the current
>family of specs

But were there 15 implementations of XML parsers that were up to date 6 
months before the release of XML? XSLT? SAX? DOM? Of course early 
implementations are often incomplete or not up to date, and that has been 
true of every spec I have been involved with. And look at the interesting 
mix of large and small vendors, academics, and hackers:

Cognetic Systems's XQuantum: http://www.cogneticsystems.com/xquery/xquery.html
Enosys Software's XQuery Demo : http://xquerydemo.enosyssoftware.com
eXcelon's eXtensible Information Server (XIS): http://www.xmlquickstart.com/
Fatdog's XQEngine: http://www.fatdog.com/
GAEL's Derby: http://www.gael.fr/derby/
GNU's Qexo (Kawa-Query): http://www.qexo.org/
Compiles XQuery on-the-fly to Java bytecodes. Based on and part of the Kawa 
framework. Open-source.
Ipedo's XML Database v3.0: http://www.ipedo.com
IPSI's IPSI-XQ: http://ipsi.fhg.de/oasys/projects/ipsi-xq/index_e.html
Lucent's Galax: http://db.bell-labs.com/galax/
Microsoft's XML Query Language Demo: http://xqueryservices.com
Nimble Technology's Nimble Integration Suite: http://www.nimble.com/
OpenLink Software's Virtuoso Universal Server: 
http://demo.openlinksw.com:8890/xqdemo
Oracle's XML DB: http://otn.oracle.com/tech/xml/xmldb/htdocs/querying_xml
QuiLogic's SQL/XML-IMDB: http://www.quilogic.cc/xml.htm
Software AG's QuiP: http://www.softwareag.com/developer/downloads/default.htm
Sourceforge's Kweelt: http://kweelt.sourceforge.net/. Open-source.
SourceForge's XQuench: http://xquench.sourceforge.net/. Open-source.
X-Hive's XQuery demo: http://www.x-hive.com/xquery
XML Global's GoXML DB: http://www.xmlglobal.com/prod/xmlworkbench/

Ooops, that's more than 15. And yes, the currency and quality varies 
significantly. What else do you expect of a spec at this stage?

>and I doubt there ever will be given the degree of complexity, 
>inconsistency, underspecification and outright errors in the current drafts.

It's quite true that XQuery is more complex to implement than an XML 
parser. That's a way of measuring cost. It's also true that a car is more 
expensive than a bicycle. I would only buy a car instead of a bicycle if I 
thought there was a benefit to doing so. Traditional cost/benefit analysis 
looks at both the cost and the benefit, not just the cost.

The fact that there are this many implementations indicates that some 
people were willing to pay the cost of implementation for the benefit they 
think XQuery will provide to their users.

As for inconsistency, underspecification, and errors - could you please 
coordinate with Microsoft's representative and make sure that the issues 
you see are in our issues list, or respond to our comments list with these? 
(public-qt-comments@w...). A Working Draft is only a Working Draft, as 
our issues list indicates. But if there are important things not on our 
issues list, please make sure we are aware of them!

Jonathan

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  • RE: Fwd: War of Attrition (was: Underwhelmed (WAS: XOM micro tutorial))
    • From: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@m...>

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