RE: XQuery syntax for BRQL semantics

I think we're both in violent agreement here.

The point is that BRQL results have structure--they're not just strings.
This is the case for XQuery as well. XQuery does *NOT* specify that
results are strings.
The language does specify that where results have structure, there is a
canonical way to serialize that structure using XML. Most standalone
XQuery engines choose to perform this serialization, but as a point of
fact that's not a part of the standard.
(This was demonstrated by Howard; different environment settings can
cause sequences to be serialized in different ways: either with newlines
between elements or without.)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Seaborne, Andy [mailto:andy.seaborne@hp.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 9:14 AM
> To: Rob Shearer; RDF Data Access Working Group
> Subject: RE: XQuery syntax for BRQL semantics
> 
> Correction:
> 
> > result: ?title = "BRQL Tutorial"
> 
> > what's listed is NOT actually the result of the
> > query. What's listed is a string representing a data structure that
> > programmers must traverse to find the result.
> 
> (this comes up several times)
> 
> Not true - this is not the syntax for the results.  That is not
> specified anywhere in the BRQL document.
> 
> This is missing the difference between presentation of results
> (something XQuery is strong on) and data access.  BRQL is strong on
> data access.  The BRQL spec is not proposing an output format.
> It is not a presentation language.
> 
> What you see in 
> > result: ?title = "BRQL Tutorial"
> is just a way to write it into a draft document.
> 
> Later, I tried with an HTML table.  Which do people prefer?
> 
> 	Andy
>

Received on Tuesday, 7 September 2004 17:46:12 UTC