Whence XQL?

[Marcelo Cantos]

On Thu, Mar 25, 1999 at 04:52:17PM -0500, Jonathan Robie wrote:
> At least one IR person criticized XQL for doing too much, eg for
> having the parent/child relationship in addition to the
> ancestor/descendant relationship. This does, in fact, increase the
> complexity of implementation, but offers a distinction that I find
> important.

This is particularly so given the broadening of XML's focus from
documents to documents and data.

> The number of implementations of XQL shows that there's a fair
> amount of interest in it. People who have demonstrated it at trade
> shows send me email telling me how impressed people are - for
> instance, I have been getting email from Software AG, which is
> showing XQL at CeBIT this week and getting very enthusiastic
> responses. When I discuss XQL at trade shows, I get enthusiastic
> responses. So the fact that there are also critics doesn't bother
> me.

I could be disingenuous ( :-) ) and suggest that the attachment to
Microsoft has more than a little to do with its success to date, but I
certainly don't want to disparage the effort in its own right.  It
offers a good compromise between expressivity and simplicity, which is
a far more practicable goal than completeness.

I am concerned (am I right on this?) at the lack of proximity
operators.  But that's just an implementor's perspective, looking at
doing things we already support.


Cheers,
Marcelo

-- 
http://www.simdb.com/~marcelo/

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