News Release: World Wide Web Consortium Issues XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Candidate Recommendations

Today, W3C achieves a milestone by issuing its XQuery documents as 
Candidate Recommendations, ready for implementation. The XQuery 
technology, which brings the best of database languages and the Web 
together, is also paired with new candidate Recommendations of XSLT 2.0 
and XPath 2.0, making a powerful trio of database and transformation 
technologies ready for product.

For more information, please contact the W3C Communications Team 
representative in your region.

-----------------------
World Wide Web Consortium Issues XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0
Candidate Recommendations

Language-independent enterprise-strength queries and transformations
create new generation of middleware

Contact Americas, Australia --
      Janet Daly, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.617.253.2613
Contact Europe, Africa, Middle-East --
      Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94
Contact Asia --
      Yasuyuki Hirakawa <chibao@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170

Web Resources:
-------------
This press release
    In English:
http://www.w3.org/2005/10/xslt-xquery-xpath-cr-pressrelease.html.en
    In French:
http://www.w3.org/2005/10/xslt-xquery-xpath-cr-pressrelease.html.fr

   * XSLT and XQuery:
           + XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0
           http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-xslt20-20051103/
           + XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Serialization
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-xslt-xquery-serialization-20051103/
           + XML Syntax for XQuery 1.0 (XQueryX)
           http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-xqueryx-20051103/

   * XQuery and XPath:

           + XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language
           http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-xquery-20051103/
           + XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0
           http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-xpath20-20051103/
           + XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model (XDM)
           http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-xpath-datamodel-20051103/
           + XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators
           http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-xpath-functions-20051103/
           + XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics
           http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-xquery-semantics-20051103/

http://www.w3.org/ -- 3 November 2005 -- Today, the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) published eight documents in the XML family as
Candidate Recommendations, sending a signal to the developer community
that the powerful new features for transforming and querying XML defined
in these specifications are ready for implementation.

- XSLT and XQuery:
   * XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0
   * XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Serialization
   * XML Syntax for XQuery 1.0 (XQueryX)
- XQuery and XPath:
   * XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language
   * XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0
   * XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model (XDM)
   * XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators
   * XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics

“These specifications have brought a new level of maturity to the XML
world,” said Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead. “We’re seeing peoplewith
literally millions of lines of XSLT transformations in production. The
Working Groups have listened to the users, to people working with large
collections of documents, to database people, to stock traders and news
feeds, and we have produced an integrated set of specifications as
strong for the enterprise as for the individual.”

XSLT 1.0 Experience and Success Fuels Version 2.0

XSLT 2.0 is a major revision to the very successful XSL Transformations
language. XSLT transforms XML content into other formats, including
other XML formats. As an example, one may use XSLT to transform XML
output from a database into an XHTML Web site or set of print-ready
XSL-FO documents. XSLT 2.0 standardizes many features that were
previously only available as extensions, such as the ability to create
multiple output documents or to create user-defined XPath functions.
With stronger support for internationalization and richer tools for the
programmer, XSLT 2.0 is better suited for the large-scale
mission-critical deployment for which XSLT 1.0 is already being used.

In addition to new functionality, XSLT 2.0 introduces strong typing and
supports the optional use of W3C XML Schema. Strong typing is a feature
of enterprise-strength programming languages such as Java, C++ and C#,
and is designed to reduce errors in programs, greatly reducing the cost
of developing and maintaining large systems.

XML Query Adds Database Functionality to XML

Where XSLT is aimed primarily at transformations, XML Query brings the
power of database search and select to XML. Like XSLT 2.0, XML Query
shares the use of W3C XML Schema to give a strongly-typed programming or
scripting language and relies on XPath 2.0 as the selection vocabulary.
With XML Query, one can run cross-vendor cross-database joins between
multiple forms of data, including XML documents, XML-native stores,
relational database tables and more.

Standardization Brings a New Age for Middleware

XSLT 2.0 and XML Query 1.0 provide a standard for database integration.
The Java Community Process has released initial work on XQJ, the XQuery
API for Java, and the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) has already incorporated XML Query into SQL in part 14 of ISO SQL
(SQL/XML). Connections between large-scale applications, databases,
operating systems, Web services and Web servers have traditionally used
middleware, that is, software that, on demand, converts and manipulates
data between the formats used by various applications. With a standard
way to integrate tools, a standard set of data formats and standard ways
to query and manipulate those data formats, users of middleware will be
able to focus on their higher-level business logic and can integrate new
sources of data much more quickly. Many vendors have been quick to
realize this and are already supporting the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2 Data
Model (XDM), bringing cost savings and new functionality to their customers.

Already Implemented, Additional Experience Sought

XQuery already benefits from significant implementation experience.
Early implementors of earlier drafts of XML Query include IBM,
Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, BEA and many others; there are also a number
of open source implementations. In the first nine months of 2005 there
were over 33,000 downloads of one open source implementation of XSLT 2
and XQuery (Saxon, by Michael Kay, editor of XSLT 2.0). The large number
of implementations of XQuery are listed on the Public XML Query Web page.

The XSL Working Group and the XML Query Working Group, which produced
this set of documents with extensive cooperation from the XML Schema
Working Group, now request that implementors run the respective test
suites and help demonstrate that the specifications are sufficiently
precise to be implemented interoperably.

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run
by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT LCS) in the USA, the
European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM)
headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided
by the Consortium include: a repository of information about the World
Wide Web for developers and users, and various prototype and sample
applications to demonstrate use of new technology. To date, nearly 400
organizations are Members of the Consortium. For more information see
http://www.w3.org/



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Received on Thursday, 3 November 2005 15:09:45 UTC