RE: [www-ql] <none>

>I'm not sure what you mean by "SQL-like functionality". Are 
>you concerned about whether we can do queries on structured documents?

Well, maybe I overstated the point.

I can see the value in a SQL-like syntax since there are plenty of
SQL-literate folks in the audience and because this syntax could be easily
digested by most XML-literate readers.  I was mainly concerned that this
syntax was implemented at the expense of the usefulness that a valid XML
syntax brings to the table.

Specifically I'm more concerned about investing a lot of effort to build a
SQL-like syntax that is easily consumed by humans at the expense of one that
is easily consumed by automated processes.  As I see it (and has been stated
in several posts), people tend to hand-edit XML documents only until
sophisticated and effective GUIs are readily available--then human
readability is mostly a convenience.  Not that people won't continue to
hand-craft XML, XSL and XQuery documents during development--but IMHO that's
a near-term problem and in this discussion, I'm focused on more long-term
challenges.

The main point of that paragraph is the following sentence:

>>Is the charter of the XQuery WG to solve the query problem 
>>for XML developers, or to make life easier for SQL 
>>applications and SQL programmers?

Even this is overstated to some degree.  The discussion that has followed my
post has really brought the key points to the surface.  My
personal/professional interest is in building infrastructure that leads to
more sophisticated business and process automation.  As mentioned above,
once we're all using GUI tools that hide the FLWR syntax, then the SQL-like
human readability is a convenience.  At this point, the fact that XQuery is
not valid XML becomes a hindrance to people architecting methods that allow
two business processes to dynamically learn how to effectively interact.

Cheers,
Jeff Chapman
Principal Architect
Pervasive Software
Email: Jeff.Chapman@pervasive.com

Received on Wednesday, 28 February 2001 17:48:55 UTC