Btw, talking with .NET developers recently (XML geeks and non-geeks) about XQuery and XSLT support in .NET 2.0 I realized that shocking fact - about 80% of devs I was talking to still have no idea XQuery support in .NET 2.0 was cut. They were listening all the road to XQuery hype, they had that idea about how XQuery is better than XSLT in mind, they are working with XQuery implementation in .NET 2.0 Beta1, they are reading "What's New in System.Xml for Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 Release" and "XQuery and SQL Server XML Support in the .NET Framework" documentation at MSDN. Oh, apparently they don't read blogs!
Here is a nice one from today's xsl-list:
I'm working with the 2.0 beta of .NET and it has XQuery 1.0 support - you are saying that it will not be supported? That sounds rather strange to me - please explain.
Pieter Reint Siegers Kort
So we better be prepared for a wave of disappointed developers once Beta 2 is out. Blogging on that isn't enough, some official MSDN article is needed. People should be warned ASAP not to waste their time/money on that.
XQSharp have now released a full implementation of XQuery for .NET. It can be downloaded at:
http://www.xqsharp.com/
Peter, I don't think it's good idea to use any internal stuff. If you mean using this XQuery impl after .NET 2.0 is out - that's probably illegal, but don't quote me on that, I'm not a lawer at all.
Let's wait Beta2 and see then.
A bit of the off topic here. May be you know :) What will happen to Beta1 MS.Internal.Xml and in the long term? How legal is to use fancy stuff from that namespace?
OK, Oleg, taken your excuse.
Just to warn you guys that I'm not alone in this sudden cut-off move of MS, this codeproject poll will tell you how many developers are using VS.NET 2005 already:
What is your favourite version of Visual Studio?
Option Votes %
Visual Studio 2005 356 19.7
Visual Studio .NET 2003 763 42.2
Visual Studio .NET 2002 35 1.9
Visual Studio 6 607 33.6
Visual Studio 97 11 .6
Visual Studio 4 34 1.9
Responses 1806
So, yes, you're right, you'd better do something about it rightaway.
Cheers,
That was an irony, Pieter. Sorry about that.
All I wanted to say is that we are so deep in blogsphere that forgot to warn real busy people (who for sure don't read blogs) about XQuery cut.
Pieter: Note that the XQuery 1.0 cut from the .Net Framework is not a Microsoft internal problem but a W3C recommendation/product ship misalignment.
If you're saying that every developer should read blogs to get to hear this kind of cut-offs then I think you're a bit on the wrong track - these kind of changes should appear through official canals.
You're right - I'm not a blog reader, no, since I'm too busy scanning all of them - and it's a growing list. And besides, most of them fill it with stuff that doesn't matter most of the time, or trying to overdue things. That's a real waste of time in my eyes.
I don't mind having missed the cut-off of XQuery 1.0, as there are alternatives. But it strikes me as I more realize than ever how well MS is doing these days - and that's not too well I'm afraid.
Cheers,
I forwarded your suggestion to the team. I agree that we need to disseminate this information wider and probably update the whitepapers as soon as possible.