RE: Re: . in for

Jeni Tennison:
>
>  - I think that having cut-down FLWR expressions in XPath
>    complicates XPath unnecessarily, when a simple mapping operator
>    would fulfil the common requirements, and xsl:for-each or recursive
>    user-defined functions or templates can handle the rest.
>
We did think about this very carefully, and recognized that there is an
step-increase in complexity, which one would rather avoid, at the point
where you introduce range variables. You need range variables as soon as you
want to do joins; and I think the need for joins will increase significantly
once you allow manipulation of general sequences. My view is that XPath
should be relationally complete, that you should never have to drop into
XSLT to combine two sequences to produce a third sequence, and for that,
range variables are definitely needed. This is part of ensuring that XPath
can handle data-oriented XML (which often includes non-hierarchic
relationships) as well as it currently handles document structures, which
are predominantly hierarchical.

Mike Kay


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