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Re: What niche is XQuery targeting?

• To: Michael Kay <mike@s...>
• Subject: Re: What niche is XQuery targeting?
• From: Daniela Florescu <dflorescu@m...>
• Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 23:18:37 -0800
• Cc: "'Michael Champion'" <michaelc.champion@g...>, davep@d..., "'Jonathan Robie'" <jonathan.robie@d...>, xml-dev@l...
• In-reply-to: <E1CbyBV-0007Wy-00@u...>
• References: <E1CbyBV-0007Wy-00@u...>

>
> I think the benefits are:

Thank you Michael for this well articulate answer. It makes perfect 
sense.
Yes, some of the benefits can be achieved by XQueryX, some not.

>>
>> And why don't you get the same benefits from XQueryX (the pure XML
>> variant of XQuery) ?
>
> Because no one would ever want to author or edit or maintain a query 
> using
> that particular language - it's far too low-level.

Sure, but that's not the point. That's why XQuery has two equivalent 
syntaxes,
  one to please human programers, and one optimized for automatic 
processing.

Those two sets of requirements are too different from each other, 
that's all.

If you try to satisfy both requirements with a unique syntax, 
inevitably there
will be some requirements that will not be fully satisfied.

For example, one cannot query (for example for security reasons) if a 
certain XSLT stylesheet
accesses the salary attribute of employee elements using only
an XML processor. In addition, one need to parse the attribute values 
to get that information.

Moreover, by using an XML syntax I am sure XSLT scared certain 
programmers.
You don't hear from them I think because you mostly hear from people 
who *like* XSLT.
I think you don't talk to a good statistical sample of the programmer 
population (but I don't
have of course evidence to support that).

And no, a angle brackets free syntax build by a single person in a 
corner will not attract me.
I have no guarantee that this syntax will still be there, and continued 
if the guy decides
to quit. One cannot program using a syntax unless there is some 
assurance of continuity.

Best regards,
Dana

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