RE: Is minimalism a goal?

> I use our selectNodes method
> extensively - more often than virtually any other DOM call.  In fact,
> selectNodes makes a number of DOM calls redundant, results in more robust
> code, and performs better in general.
>

I agree and I think most MSXML users fit into this category (I bet Oracle
users will follow suit). Ever since selectNodes was introduced, I hardly
ever use any of the other hierarchical members (of Node) for traversal.

> I observe that one person's feature is another person's bloat, and that in
> my experience the standardization process leads to a union of everyone's
> features rather than the intersection.
>

Agreed.

> There are several directions for XPath APIs to take:
> - minimal, convenience-oriented (e.g. Microsoft/Oracle selectNodes)
> - complete (e.g. full context initialization, matching, etc.)
> - performant (complete + compiled queries, streaming support, etc.)
>

I'm starting to believe that a combination of *minimal* and *performant*
should be the scope of this work. I think a *minimal* solution that covers
90+% of the use cases is a good first step, while looking forward to a more
long-term, complete solution that ties in with the work of XML Query.


-aaron