XQuery and databases - XQuery 2.0

[Wolfgang]

> I am not running the query in the server. I use xquery "standalone", triggered with java or VB.net using saxon.

Sure, you can use saxon on the client to query a document stored in 
eXist. As Michael already said, this makes sense in some cases. However, 
to avoid misunderstandings: please note that your query will not benefit 
from any database features this way and you will be using eXist as a 
plain container. To benefit from indexes, you have to use eXist's own 
query engine (I think this applies to all other xmldb's as well).

> Yes,I want to retrieve a whole document, even on a different server, and normally I get the full name.

Ok, your original approach should work then. Using saxon I can query a 
document stored in eXist with e.g.

doc("http://localhost:8080/exist/rest/db/examples.xml")//query

> If I want to retrieve more documents, I could use collections, right? (I have not used collections yet)

What constitutes a collection is implementation dependent. If you are 
using saxon on the client, you need to create a saxon collection.

Wolfgang