RE: [www-ql] <none>

At 12:07 AM 3/1/2001 +0100, Ingo Macherius wrote:

>Hm, isn't the tail waiving with the dog here ? XQuery has to prove
>compliance with Algebra by giving a mapping, not the other way round ...

I believe the real requirement is for XQuery and the algebra to be 
completely compatible. Since the language and the algebra were defined over 
the same period, and we were talking to each other, I think that the two 
are broadly compatible. For any incompatibility we identify, there is no 
general principle that tells us whether XQuery should change or the Algebra 
should change to support it. That's something the Working Group has to 
decide on an issue-by-issue basis.

> > We all seem to agree that for humans FLWR is easier to
> > understand than XML. Since at this stage people need to understand the
> > semantics and the expressive power of the proposed language, FLWR seems to
> > be a message format that is superior to XML :-)
>
>Tail waving with dog again. To put it another way: now we have the FLWR-hen,
>the majority of the XML community becomes aware of the Algebra-egg. This is
>a very good thing, given the long silence regarding XML Query.

The Algebra is a Very Good Thing, and brings great benefit to XQuery. 
However, it is not really the egg out of which XQuery hatched, XQuery came 
from Quilt, which was not based on the Query Algebra. I was very pleased to 
see how easy it was to map XQuery onto the Query Algebra.

Jonathan

Received on Friday, 2 March 2001 08:48:03 UTC