Almost 6 months after it's been announced that Microsoft won't ship XQuery implementation in the .NET 2.0, StylusStudio (maker of the namesake XML IDE) decided to run an online petition "XQuery for all" to urge Microsoft change the mind. Well, as a marketing action it's ok, but the petition itself is hopeless being ridiculously late. Asking Microsoft to include an implementation for a Working Draft technology, which they decided not to ship at least half a year ago and after Beta2 is out is a weird idea. Sorry guys, I won't sign it. Back in October 2004 - I would sign it for sure, but not now.
I call it the blogsphere shadow effect - sometimes we bloggers get blind and see no other parts of the world. Dare Obasanjo announced (in his blog of course) that XQuery is cut from .NET 2.0 back in October 2004 and we all discussed that (in blogs of course) for months, until it became clear that there are some developers out there, who just don't read blogs and so still playing with condemned XQuery bits in early .NET 2.0 betas. Then XML team published an official announce in January. And now in May we've got this petition, cool but too late.
Small advice for StylusStudio - one gotta read blogs in this century to be informed early.
iI'm just a lil fish; not even an MVP. I spend most of my time inthe real world where being an MVP carries about as much weight as driving a Navigator' 'i.e' so what.
RE the stmt ' Ya gotta read blogs', I take it you mean we have to be exposed to trite attempts at water coolor humurisms, interspresed w/ the writers smart alek personality.
Not really, bucko. Approve this or not i dont care
I tend to agree with the substantive matter of their petition, that XQuery is useful as a data processing and integration technology for the "middle tier". The fact that there is a community of users behind the Saxon .NET project tends to validate this concept in general. And yeah it's probably too late for XQuery in .NET 2.0 Framework but (I hope) raising the issue now will help get it into .NET 2.1 Framework (???). Better late then never. Who knows what MSFT will do.
Have you seen this picture: :o)
http://www.xsltblog.com/archives/saxon.net_watertower.jpg
Yeah, I've read the thread about that survey. It's a marketing stuff you know, most likely as well as this petition.
Hi Oleg,
I completely agree with you, except that the petition is "cool".
This petition is not cooler than the recent "XQuery Adoption Survey Results" statistical study of the same company. To see how ridiculous their "statistics" is, read Rick Jelliffe's response (, which made everyone laugh) at:
http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200503/msg00441.html
To me the fact that they undertook this survey and now this petition only shows how great their panick is after realising too-late that they miscalculated the possible effect XQuery could have on the developers community.
Otherwise, would XQuery need such desperate efforts to save?
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev.