Evolution of XPath - XPath 3.0 (Review)

Hello,

You may recall that Dimitre Novatchev posted an invitation to review
training courses he created and published on Pluralsight.  I missed an
earlier invitation so was pleased to have another chance.

Altogether, I'm excited by the new XPath features and it is much more
clear to me capabilities of functional programming to create reusable
code and solve problems with less code and fewer steps. If you are
able to watch this training course, especially if you want to "get
caught up" on the XPath 3.0 specification, I think you will find this
training course very helpful.

In general, Evolution of XPath is rather superbly written, succinct
both in its spoken explanation and animation. I think we've all seen
our share of Powerpoint transitions and paused to contemplate the fate
of humanity, so I was impressed to see that the speech and
highlighting are so well timed that not a moment is wasted.  It comes
together quite nicely and at a good pace.

I have considerable experience with XML, XSLT, XForms and XQuery but I
am not an expert and had not followed the 3.0 specification closely
because it was not within my current job's requirements. That said, I
found the content to be thorough and I believe all (or all important)
changes to the XPath specification are covered - it is a 4.5 hour
course.

If I may now digress, you may have heard the adage, "If your only tool
is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail" and I once tweeted
(since no only simply remarks anymore) that, "If all you have are
nails, you can use a hammer, or rock or whatever is handy." And this
has been my feeling and experience with XML.  I'm not sure why the
trend has been to more and more generics in code, but generalizing
data to the same object model and serialized output (XML) is ... not
well understood or appreciated, it seems.

Anyway, I've picked up some enthusiasm for XML programming and an
appreciation for the continued efforts of the standard writers and
programmers (and Dimitre).   Indeed, XML specification, parsers,
tools, object interfaces, binary file translators, etc. etc. are all
quite evolved making it a bit of a golden age for XML -- if only
programmers knew...

http://www.pluralsight.com/search/?searchTerm=novatchev

Best regards,
Hank

-- 
Hank Ratzesberger
XMLWerks.com