Re: XPath DOM and XPath 2.0

On Fri, 2002-03-29 at 15:47, Joseph Kesselman wrote:
> Admittedly, the XPath2 Data Model is still a moving target, and if we don't
> want to wait for them there is a risk that we may not match what they do.
> So if we really want to go into Last Call _now_, we don't have much choice.
> 
> Of course the users' response to the DOM Xpath LC may be "Wait for XPath2".
> If that's really their preference...

XPath 2 will be compatible with XML Query since they are trying to work
together. So, when the time for XPath 2.0, it will be probably the time
for XML Query as well. At that time, we might want to consider doing
full Query API instead of trying to map it to DOM3 XPath. 
DOM3 XPath does not even claim to be full XPath 1.0 given that we are
not supporting variables. We are not covering all possible use cases for
an XPath 1.0 API either. For exampe, I can see room for an API that take
XML Document(s), an XML Query, and returns a set of DOM Nodes directly
instead of being force to load those XML Documents into DOMs first.
Relaxing rules on the XPath Namespace node or extending the XPathResult
to support sequences could be done in a revised version of DOM3XPath.
Our understanding is that we will have to revise the mapping between the
DOM and XPath 2.0 in any case due to the difference between XPath 1.0
and 2.0. IMHO, we should delay the decision to extend DOM3 XPath to
XPath 2.0 or go for a full Query API until we get XPath 2.0 and XML
Query 1.0 in REC. 

Philippe

Received on Friday, 29 March 2002 17:26:29 UTC