On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 20 September 2012 08:51, Ihe Onwuka <ihe.onwuka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> thats the genus of the paradox I was referring to.
>
> This is my point and the key bit to get :)
>
> The fact the order of attributes cannot be guaranteed has nothing to
> do with position() and last(), as by the time those functions get to
> be used the order of the node list is known.
>

My initial post (if you read it again) was to highlight the paradox of
being able to apply ordering semantics to something that is
intrinsically unordered.

By contrast what are/would be (who knows what weird implementations
are out there) the semantics of corresponding constructs within the
context of SQL (absent an order by clause).