Publisher's Synopsis
Working it's way towards W3C Recommendation status sometime in 2002, the XQuery language and associated specifications are the biggest project to date from the World Wide Web Consortium since it ratified XML in 1998. XQuery is to XML data as SQL is to data in relational databases and more - a single syntax that allows us to specify queries on structured XML data, independent of how and on what platform it is stored, and return the results as XML in a structure of your choosing. It is also one of the first large scale attempts to get the various W3C specifications in line with each other, uniting the XSL, XQuery, and XML Schema working groups in its creation.;"Early Adopter XQuery" presents the facts about this technology, covering its history and development and what changes might occur in the future before it is ratified. Easy-to-follow introductions to the XQuery language are presented for those already familiar with SQL and XSLT that others can follow too and a look at the early implementations of XQuery that exist around the internet. In particular, .NET and Java classes are looked at which can be used to incorporate XQuery into work and a basic case study demonstrating how to build your own XQuery engine. This book covers: the History of XQuery, its predecessors and how to work with the current set of XQuery documents; the XQuery Data Model, Formal Semantics and Use Cases; XQuery from a SQL perspective; XQuery from an XSLT/XML perspective; the current set of XQuery implementations available today, in particular Microsoft's .NET classes for XQuery and FatDog's Java implementation; and how to set about building your own XQuery engine.;This book is for database and XML developers, preferably with a knowledge of SQL or XSLT, who want to get familiar with and keep track of what will be an industry standard once complete. This book was written against the Summer 2001 working drafts but the generic nature of the book means that it should be valid through to Recommendation status. XQuery is platform-independent and we have reflected this in the book by not limiting our discussions to any one operating system.
