RE: Dynamic Context Discovery Functions

Tom:
Thank you for your note.  The WGs discussed your recommendations at the
joint meeting on 1/19/2005 and decided not to add the functions you suggested.
There has been similar suggestions in the past and the WGs have taken the 
position that a more comprehensive proposal should be considered for the the
next version of XML Query.

All the best, Ashok
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-qt-comments-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-qt-comments-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Tom Bradford
> Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 1:01 PM
> To: public-qt-comments@w3.org
> Subject: Dynamic Context Discovery Functions
> 
> 
> I posted this on my blog, and got a lot of responses saying 
> that it would be an extremely good thing to have, 
> particularly for XSLT processing rather than XQuery itself.  
> I was wondering if these functions could be considered for 
> inclusion in the XPath function set.
> 
> As they're functions, they don't represent a change to the 
> language syntax, and they also could be essentially stubbed 
> out for implementations that don't support them.
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
> 
> XQuery and XPath operate against the notion of a dynamic 
> context, where the concepts of current collection, and 
> document set are knowns, yet there are no functions available 
> for exposing those variables. As a person who pretty much 
> lives XML database technology, I find that information 
> incredibly important from an implementation standpoint, if 
> only to minimize reliance on APIs such as the XML:DB API in 
> order perform repository discovery.
> 
> Therefore I propose that the following functions be added 
> that expose additional aspects of the dynamic context:
> 
> fn:default-collection() as xs:anyURI
> Returns a URI to the default Collection.
> 
> fn:child-collections(xs:anyURI) as xs:anyURI* Returns a 
> sequence of URIs to for the specified URI. Return an empty 
> sequence if there are none, or an error if the underlying 
> store does not support this functionality.
> 
> fn:child-collections() as xs:anyURI*
> Same as the child-collections(xs:anyURI) form, but executed 
> against the default collection.
> 
> fn:collection-documents(xs:anyURI) as xs:anyURI* Returns a 
> sequence of URIs identifying the document resources that are 
> associated with the specified collection URI. Return an empty 
> sequence if there are none, or an error if the underlying 
> store does not support this functionality.
> 
> fn:collection-documents() as xs:anyURI*
> Same as the collection-documents(xs:anyURI) form, but 
> executed against the default collection.
> 
> --
> Tom Bradford - Virtuoso Technology Evangelist OpenLink 
> Software: http://www.openlinksw.com/ Personal Web Log:  
> http://www.tbradford.org/
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 20 January 2005 04:24:34 UTC