Dynamic context default values

[Michael Kay]

> I neither see that implementations must be able to set the 
> collection to certain nodes, so the XQTS is a bit 
> over-demanding here, in my opinion.
> 
> However, this is actually the first time I've seen an 
> implementor consider this a problem.

I remember a similar question came up early in the life of XSLT 1.0: would
an implementation be conformant if every URL passed to the document()
function returned a "document not found" error? The answer is that it would;
and in some circumstances such a processor might even be marketable, e.g. if
designed to run in a high security environment.

But I don't think this means that such tests should be absent from the test
suite. What it means is that they should be labelled so that if necessary
you can avoid running them and explain why you didn't run them. If your
product doesn't have a feature then you presumably have a good reason for
excluding it and are not frightened of explaining in public why it is
absent.

I initially thought that the collection() function wasn't going to be useful
outside a database context. In fact, Saxon users have found it a very
valuable feature, given the ability to map a URI to a selection of files
from a hierarchic filestore.

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