- From: Jeff Chapman <Jeff.Chapman@pervasive.com>
- Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 15:24:45 -0600
- To: www-ql@w3.org
IMHO, the FLWR expressions bring great value to people who have to read/write XQuery documents the hard way, ie, with a text editor. I also agree that after the dust settles, most people will use GUIs to construct XQueries and they'll almost never care what the syntax looks like--as long as the results are correct. When I worry about XQuery not being valid XML, I'm looking at a spot a bit over the horizon when we're devising ways to automate things like XML protocol handling, B2B negotiation, workflows across organizational boundaries, and so forth. At this point in time, the ease which humans analyze XQueries will be purely a convenience whereas the ease which applications analyze queries will be critical. By analyze, I mean to dissect, reorganize, rewrite and possibly execute the generated query. Frankly, when I first read through the FLWR discussion in the Draft, it took fully a day before I realized that it wasn't effectively a Macro language that would be converted to valid XML later--perhaps with some sort of preprocessor. Is it possible to have our cake and eat it too? This might mean implementing XQuery in valid XML syntax and defining a preprocessor that would convert FLWR expressions to the equivalent valid XML. Those folks who need the convenience of the FLWR syntax could simply preprocess the XQuery, edit the FLWR expression and postprocess the XQuery back into valid XML. It's not my preference to lose the ease of use for humans, but I'm very concerned that we preserve the means to use 4th or 5th generation XML tools in ways we haven't even thought of yet. Cheers, Jeff Chapman Principal Architect Pervasive Software Email: Jeff.Chapman@pervasive.com
Received on Wednesday, 28 February 2001 16:27:17 UTC