Re: XQuery basics

On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 14:55 -0400, Wendell Piez wrote:
> Rob,
> 
> At 01:35 PM 6/4/2008, you wrote:
> >If you use a small main Source XML with the minimum necessary
> >instructions for a transform, then you can bring in the bulk the
> >required XML through the document function (maybe with a URIResolver
> >that uses XQuery, but...)
> 
> Isn't this effectively the same thing?

I had thought so, that was my point which I stated in a part you
snipped:

"I don't understand. What would be the benefit of pointing to an XSL
with
nothing telling it what to do? I mean, how would XSL even know what the
request was for without something driving it? And if you have something
driving it, you have what we have now. What am I missing?"

> 
> >Don't the XML databases work best with many small documents rather than
> >one or a few very large documents?
> 
> I should think that depends on the database. 

You should probably think that way, but I don't think it does in
reality. I'd be curious to know, though.

> In any case, I didn't 
> intend to suggest that the classic architecture would become 
> obsolete, but merely to agree that Andrew was onto something that 
> could be very useful. For large-scale queries over aggregated data, 
> the classic mapping of single document to single result via a single 
> transform may not serve so well. This is where XQuery comes in. But 
> XQuery alone is a blunt instrument for final transformations for 
> rendering, which you are also likely to want.

Sure. I just tend to prefer small-as-possible documents pulled in with
the document function.

best,
-Rob

> 
> Cheers,
> Wendell
> 
> 
> 
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