Why no Group By in Version 1.0?

At 09:03 PM 3/6/2003 -0800, Nitin Mangtani wrote:

>Jim,
>
>   Sorry for jumping on this tread late, why  "Group By" did not make into 
> XQuery spec. I understand one can use combination of distinct and 
> aggregate function to simulate a Group  By. But having a direct Group By 
> makes life much easier for everyone (Customers, Vendors, you? and me;) ).

One simple answer is that Group By is complex, the relational Group By does 
not map cleanly into XQuery so we would need to come up with a different 
Group By, we have not had consensus for any of the Group By proposals that 
have been put forward, and we do not yet have a good set of use cases that 
we agree on.

I think this is something we should study in XQuery 2.0, but I do think we 
can have a very useful XML query language without it, and adding features 
at the same time we are trying to finalize the standard is a recipe for 
disaster. We should not try to squeeze in anything new unless it is 
absolutely crucial.

My opinion only, not that of the Working Group.

Jonathan