xquery & web server in browser

[Robert Koberg]

On Jun 17, 2009, at 10:13 AM, Gary Lewis wrote:

> I'm a new member of the talk list and am uncertain that my question is
> appropriate. Please ignore if it is off topic.
>
> Can anyone comment on the possibility that xquery could be used as a
> data integration/mashup tool running in a browser that included a web
> server?

Why? To me, the best thing about XQuery is that it can run natively  
(and more efficiently than the more encompassing XSL) on an XML DB  
providing all the speed and memory efficiency afforded by the  
different and incompatible XML DBs. Caveat emptor: I fall into the  
camp that doesn't believe XQuery is a good styling language or a good  
PHP-like webapp templating language. (if there even is a camp, rather  
than me leaning over a bic lighter)

Running XQuery in the browser seems like a huge waste of bandwidth  
where you would have to download everything you want to query against,  
perhaps to find only a tiny fragment. I would create a URL and just  
GET it from a server where XQuery creates the XML or JSON to be styled  
on the client with XSL or JavaScript (as &deity; intended).


> There's been quite a bit of excitement the past couple days
> about the Opera Unite announcement of its "web server in a web
> browser" concept.

Google's Gears has been around for a while:

http://gears.google.com/

-Rob


> Is it possible that xquery, as a
> query/integration/transformation tool, might someday be a plugin to a
> browser (eg, Chrome; Chrome/Wave)?
>
>
> I'm asking out of ignorance more than anything. The dots seem to be
> there for the connecting, but I guess that's what I'm asking ... are
> the dots there, are they likely to be connected, or is it just wishful
> thinking?
>
> Just so you have some orientation as to where this question is coming
> from. I'm basically a data user ... someone who uses tools like SQL
> and XQuery and R to do analysis with data. In the course of doing
> this, I've stretched into the IT side of things and designed
> enterprise data warehouses etc. So my interest in
> xquery-in-a-web-server-browser is so I can do cool things with data.
> I'm not interested in actually creating an xquery plugin that would
> make this possible. I wouldn't even know how to start.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Gary
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