XQuery as a general data processing language WAS: XQuery and Web 2.0

[Daniela Florescu]

>
> What do you think about e.g. LINQ which from what I understand of it  
> seem to try and deal with this integration/mismatch problem? Would  
> that not better fit better under the "general data processing"  
> language umbrella?


No, personally I don't think LINQ is the solution. For the following  
reasons:

(a) the XML they support is a bastardization of the normal XML
so it will satisfy only some users (I never understood their choice on  
that...POX is very
powerful)

(b) they only support a subset of the processing facilities that  
people need
(e.g. groupby, full text, windowing, dynamic namespace generation,  
etc, etc).
For the rest you go back to low level programming.

(c) There is no way low level programs in C#+ XML/LINQ  can  be  
optimized automatically
as well as XQuery can be  optimized automatically on large volumes of  
data, and/or indexed
data (I am willing to take a beer bet with Erik Meijer any time on  
that :-)))

and finally (and probably the most important, or the fundamental  
factor):

(c) the world needs a good non proprietary language for data processing.

This is a way too important problem for people to accept to be locked  
in by a
specific vendor, with no open source implementations.

Best regards
Dana