couple of spec comments

Hi,

here are my initial 2c on the new XQuery/XPath specs.

1. External functions, mentioned in issues 124 and
223, is a very important feature indeed. However it
would be insufficient simply to define them as
outlined in 223. The invocation paradigm has also to
be addressed somehow: system library function, Java
class, EJB or COM interface method, SOAP invocation
etc, just to name some possibilities.

One natural way to approach it would be with
deployment descriptors, J2EE-style, with a dialect of
XML supporting invocation paradigm descriptions. Such
files could be linked to external functions by name,
and reside at a well-known location. Another
possibility would be to refer to invocation paradigm
descriptor URL directly from external function
definitions.

2. Recursion in dereferencing. As I understand it such
recursion is not allowed, unlike one over conventional
navigation axes. So the manager-employee example in
2.3.3 could not be generalized, say, to look for a
person some place up the reporting chain. This could
become more conspicuous an omission if dereferencing
syntax is merged with one of axes, as considered in
227.

The recursion in question can become very useful, for
example, for advanced UDDI registry querying, allowing
to traverse tModel hierarchies.

Cheers

Vadim

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Received on Thursday, 27 December 2001 13:24:00 UTC