Modify/add elements to element() variable

[Michael Kay]

> you add that resulting xml structure to Parent? It seems like 
> you would have to recursively "add" new elements all the way 
> up the tree.

Yes, that's exactly what you have to do.

XQuery 1.0 is good at extracting small amounts of information from input
documents. If you want to make small changes to your input documents, you're
much better off using XSLT (or XQuery Updates)

> 
> I know I can do this with XQuery Update but I would like to 
> do it in memory before actually saving the xml to the DB.
> 

Take a look at the so-called transform expression in XQuery Updates (the
syntax is copy .... modify). This allows you to do an update and capture the
results of the update in a variable for further processing.

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