Re: Suggestion for New XQuery Use Cases

Dear Zack Ives,

This is a response to the following message, which you posted to the XML
Query Working Group's comments list:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-xml-query-comments/2001Jun/0040.html

The XML Query Working Group has approved the following response:

Your email raises two separate points: (1) the dynamic construction of
document names, and (2) the dynamic building and submission of queries
via a protocol such as HTTP or SOAP.

With respect to the first issue, there is nothing in our current model which
precludes dynamic construction of document names as in your example (we have
not published a formal specification for the document() function yet, but it
takes a string as an argument; clearly that string can be constructed
dynamically by an expression as you do in your example).

However, the Query WG has been careful to separate the query language from
the environment in which it executes.  One aspect of this separation is that
the query specification very specifically does not state how document names
are to be translated into documents, nor does it require the query language
to support any particular syntax or protocol for addressing documents
(specifically, despite the use of URL's in many of our examples, we do not
require a query processor to access documents over the web).

That said, we agree that it would be valuable to add a use case to
demonstrate dynamically constructed names, as well as add text to the XML
Query specification clarifying the freedom of query implementations to
resolve document names as they see fit.  The working group is unsure if
it will be able to add this material into XQuery 1.0. It would assist us
greatly if you could provide us with such a use case for consideration by
the working group.


As to the second point, a capability within XQuery for dynamically building 
and submitting queries (presumably to other query processors): this
capability
is definitely out of our scope for XQuery 1.0; our requirements specifically
state that we the query language must be protocol independent.  However such
a capability could fall within the realm of extensions to the language or in
future versions of the language.


We appreciate your feedback on the XML Query specifications. Please let us
know if this response is satisfactory. If not, please respond to this
message, explaining your concerns.

Denise Draper, on behalf of the XML Query WG.

Received on Tuesday, 17 July 2001 22:58:39 UTC