Order of results in XQuery expressions

[Michael Kay]

> <nitpick>
> Though this is the way how all XQuery processors that I am 
> aware of behave, it is not actually demanded by the specs.  
> Rather, the default setting of `ordering mode' (if nothing is 
> set in the query prolog) is implementation-defined (Sect. 
> 4.7, XQuery 1.0 CR).
> </nitpick>

Technically you are right (and I deliberately glossed over this point,
because I thought it was unlikely to help the OP with his problem). The
results of unordered evaluation of path expressions can be so weird that I
don't think any processor would make this the default. For
"implementation-defined" read "may be controlled using an
implementation-defined API".

Michael Kay