[Bug 2796] [Update] updating nodes, then returning values computed from them

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=2796





------- Comment #3 from dflorescu@mac.com  2006-08-24 21:57 -------
Tony,

Personally I am also convinced that the real utility of XQuery will be attained
only after
we add enough functionakity to make it a  full (and easy to use) programming
language
-- targeted at XML processing of course, not a general purpose programming
language.

Some of us we have been working in this direction. We proposed an extension
called 
XQueryP (www.ximep-2006.org/papers/Paper-Chamberlin-Carey.pdf) by adding
a small number of extensions like variable assignement,
sequential/deterministic
evaluation order in case of side-effects and such.

Everything being said, your comment unfortunatelly does not give us enough 
details in terms of what kind of features would you like to see in XQuery in
the
future. A "programming language" is too general for us to understand your
intent.

In order to help the process it would be really good if you could give us a
detailed
description of the features you would like to see, together with some use cases
that
you consider important. For example, would something like XQueryP be a good
solution for you ?

Thanks, best regards
Dana





(In reply to comment #2)
> I'm distressed to find that the Working Draft of 11 July 2006 still does not
> address this issue. The current spec seems to make it impossible, for example,
> to express web application logic in XQuery. If even top-level queries must
> either return a value OR perform an update, but never both, then *something*
> (other than XQuery) is going to have to co-ordinate the response to requests
> that involve updates. And the revolution is once again deferred.
> 
> The update model currently used in eXist, a native XML DBMS, 
> (http://exist.sourceforge.net) has the characteristic described in Comment #1:
> update expressions evaluate to the empty sequence. This tool drastically
> reduces the pain of web development.
> 
> Please allow XQuery (with Update) to be a programming language, not just a
> query language.
>

Received on Thursday, 24 August 2006 21:57:34 UTC