size of XQuery developer community

[bryan rasmussen]

The difference between R and XQuery however is that R is a language
with one implementation.
Thus the site for downloading R can also provide all this information
to users, for XQuery it is too fragmented.

Best Regards,
Bryan Rasmussen

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 5:40 PM, Gary Lewis<http://x-query.com/mailman/listinfo/talk> wrote:
> On Wed Aug 26 17:39:05 PDT 2009, Daniela Florescu wrote:
>
>> ... XQuery has tremendous potential for adding
>> value to customers, but the proof isn't there yet, and the path isn't
>> clear either.
>>
>> There has to be a larger XQuery pool of expertise ...
>
> Hi Daniela - I finally got around to reading this entire thread thru
> to 9/1. It's truly humbling to see how much about XQuery, XML, etc I
> do not know.
>
> But perhaps my newcomer status will provide a useful perspective.
>
> First some quick background. I definitely don't yet qualify as an
> XQuery developer. But I've been working pretty conscientiously over
> the past 4 or 5 months. I come to XQuery with decades of SQL, data
> warehouse design, and policy analysis background (ie, I see databases
> as a means to analysis, not an end in themselves). I got interested in
> XQuery because I needed a tool that would let me query the Web in a
> similar fashion to querying relational databases. The Web and web
> query tools are still primitive by comparison, but I've been quite
> pleased with what's possible. For example, my latest XQuery
> demonstration project mashed up US Dept of Education data with Federal
> Reserve data to examine the question of whether higher education in
> the US is countercyclical. See:
> http://garymlewis.com/instchg/2009/08/10/another-xquery-use-case-is-higher-education-countercyclical/
>
> Given a choice, I'll almost always choose tools with power and
> capability versus those with ease-of-use but limited application. So,
> for example, I'm willing to curse and beat my head against a wall
> every time I use the R stat programs because I know that somehow
> there's a solution in R and that someone in the R community will know
> what the solution is.
>
> I've probably written several thousand XQuery programs now. But I only
> feel comfortable in a very narrow niche. There is just oodles about
> XML and all the other X standards and tools that I do not know. Some
> of this is surely just beginner's lament (ie, the notion that anything
> you can't learn instantly is way too complex). But some too is a steep
> learning curve in the absence of adequate support for learning.
>
> You ask why there is not more XQuery expertise. The XQuery community
> might benefit from looking at the R community [see:
> http://www.r-project.org/ ] and the considerable help resources
> available there. It's easier for a developer to get untracked with any
> new tool if there is visible help available. With regard to R, I'm
> talking here about specialized search sites, repositories of learning
> materials, open source and free tools, dozens upon dozens of forums,
> examples as code fragments, online books and manuals, and a community
> of very active R developers/enhancers.
>
> I like XQuery a lot. I will continue to use it. And no doubt in the
> course of using it, I'll fill in the many holes of what I don't know.
> But I could sure benefit from something like an XQuery learning
> resource site.
>
> Gary
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