June 13, 2006

XSLT2/XPath2/XQuery1 fresh CRs

W3C has released fresh versions of the Candidate Recommendations of XML Query 1.0, XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0 and supporting documents. No big deal changes - xdt:* types has been moved to xs:* namespace (damn XML Schema). See new XQuery1/XPath2 type system below. Looks like XSLT2/XPath2/XQuery1 are moving fast toward Proposed ...

January 19, 2006

XQuery Style Conventions

Creators of the XQDoc, a free tool for documenting XQuery modules have released XQuery Style Conventions. They claim the document to be to be based on experience and feedback from the XQuery development community. It does seem ok to me. In a perfect world every programmer would follow style conventions ...

December 13, 2005

"Schema-Aware Queries and Stylesheets" article from Michael Kay

In the latest article "Schema-Aware Queries and Stylesheets" Michael Kay explaines how useful XML Schema-awareness is for XQuery queries and XSLT stylesheets. ...

November 29, 2005

XML support in next SQL Server - suggest a feature

Michael Rys asks "What do you want to see regarding XML support in the next version of SQL Server?" Don't miss a chance to suggest your favorite feature. ...

November 9, 2005

Another XQuery tutorial by Mike Kay: "Blooming FLWOR - An Introduction to the XQuery FLWOR Expression"

Mike Kay keeps teaching us XQuery. New installment of his XQuery tutorials series sponsored by the Stylus Studio, is called "Blooming FLWOR - An Introduction to the XQuery FLWOR Expression" and covers XQuery FLWOR expressions, "the workhorse of the XQuery language". ...

November 6, 2005

XSLT 2.0, XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Are W3C Candidate Recommendations

That's a big milestone in a 6-years-going-so-far design-by-committee experiment: XSLT 2.0, XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 are finally W3C Candidate Recommendations. That means that W3C now officially calls for implementations (which shows another weirdness of the design-by-committee process as XQuery alone has about 40 implementations already as per Ken North ...

September 22, 2005

"How we did XQuery in SQL Server 2005" paper

Microsoft's paper about "the experiences and the challenges in implementing XQuery in Microsoft's SQL Server 2005" is available here. [Via Michael Rys] ...

September 7, 2005

XQuery in 10 min

Stylus Studio Team has published "Learn XQuery in 10 minutes" article by Mike Kay. Smells like Stylus Studio commercial, but anyway good intro to XQuery. ...

August 14, 2005

XML in SQL Server 2005 news

Couple of news bits you want to check out if you are interested in XML and SQL Server 2005: Michael Rys talks about XML in the upcoming SQL Server 2005 on Channel9 43 min video. 15seconds.com published an article "SQL Server 2005 XQuery and XML-DML" by Alex Homer. Part 1 ...

August 3, 2005

Saxon 8.5, new optimizations and abilities

Michael Kay has released Saxon XSLT and XQuery processor v8.5. This new release implements some very interesting optimizations (available only in commercial version though) and new abilities, one of which is probably worth to implement in EXSLT.NET module. ...

July 14, 2005

Expert Panel Podcast: SQL/XML, XQuery and Databases

Ken North: WebServicesSummit.com has released two podcasts of a panel discussion with Ron Bourret, Dana Florescu, Michael Kay, Jonathan Robie and Michael Rys. The discussion topics include XQuery, native XML databases, SQL/XML databases, XSLT and related topics. The part 1 podcast (MP3 audio) focuses primarily on XQuery (running time: 34:03 ...

May 1, 2005

XQuery in .NET 2.0 Petition - too late, guys!

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 ...

April 6, 2005

XQuery as Perl for XML

New bunch of XSL/XQuery working drafts has been published, some in Last Call. Now it's 12 documents, including a new interesting one. Changes are mostly minor though so if they wouldn't get another zillion of comments (do many realize than by posting a comment, even about a small typo to ...

March 27, 2005

MSDN Webcast: Making the Most of XQuery with SQL Server 2005 (Level 300) - 4/26/2005

Michael Rys will be presenting MSDN Webcast "Making the Most of XQuery with SQL Server 2005 (Level 300)" at 4/26/2005. This session provides an introduction to XQuery and the data modification language as implemented in SQL Server 2005, and shows you how to get the most from XQuery. Learn how ...

March 3, 2005

Another interview with Michael Rys on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and XQuery

Ivan Pedruzzi (Stylus Studio) has interviewed Michael Rys on XQuery, Yukon and XML technologies at Microsoft. Really interesting one, read it here. ...

December 12, 2004

Some attractive XQuery papers

Some goodies from Daniela Florescu and the Database Group at the University of Heidelberg: "The BEA Streaming XQuery Processor" (full version?), D. Florescu, C. Hillery, D. Kossmann, P. Lucas, F. Riccardi, T. Westmann, M.J. Carey, A. Sundararajan. VLDB Journal. "Implementing Memoization in a Streaming XQuery Processor", Y. Diao, D. Florescu ...

September 20, 2004

Interview with Michael Rys: "SQL Server 2005: Integrating SQL, XML, and XQuery"

SQLSummit.com published 15-minute video interview with Michael Rys on "SQL Server 2005: Integrating SQL, XML, and XQuery" - http://www.sqlsummit.com/People/MRys.htm. "Michael discusses SQL Server 2005 support for XQuery, SQL/XML and the SQL:2003 standard. He discusses b-tree, quadtree, and r-tree indexes and pluggable and selectable indexing techniques for XML documents. He also ...

August 30, 2004

XQuery book sample chapter

By the way, Chapter 3 "Navigation" of the "XQuery: The XML query language" book by Michael Brundage is available online on Michael's site (PDF version). Take a look at http://www.qbrundage.com/xquery/toc.html. ...

August 29, 2004

XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 type hierarchy chart

Print this and stick near to your monitor: XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 type hierarchy chart ...

August 23, 2004

XQuery book hidden anagram

I'm reading "XQuery: The XML query language" book by Michael Brundage. Very well written and enjoyable to read book (well may be that's because my previous one was oh-boy-1000pages-of-math-and-pseudocode "Introduction to Algorithms" ? :). Anyway, here is what an interesting stuff I found in Michael's XQuery book. On page 29 ...

May 16, 2004

An Introduction to the XQuery (and XPath 2.0) Type System by Michael Rys

Michael Rys (PM for the SQL Server Engine support of XQuery) is trying to bring some order into the confusion around XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 type system. His first instalment in the series introduces the terminology and general concepts. Read it here. More to come, worth to stay tuned. ...

March 9, 2004

"Influences on the design of XQuery" article

Great article "XQuery from the Experts: Influences on the design of XQuery" by Don Chamberlin. It's an excerpt from a chapter of "XQuery from the Experts: A Guide to the W3C XML Query Language" book. Good reading. Why relational data model doesn't fit XML, why SQL can't be used to ...

February 20, 2004

"XQuery and XPath Formal Semantics" goes Last Call Working Draft

"XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics" spec has been updated today and reached Last Call Working Draft status. This is a document you may want to read to get deep understanding of semantics of XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 languages: This document defines the semantics of [XPath/XQuery] by giving ...

XQuery for simple problems only?

Here is what Michael Kay (XSLT star, developer of Saxon, author of every-XSLT-dev-bible "XSLT Programmer's Reference" and XSLT 2.0 editor) writes about XQuery: The strength of XQuery is that it is a simpler language than XSLT, which makes it much more feasible to implement efficient searching of very large XML ...

February 18, 2004

New XQuery book

Michael Brundage's excellent XQuery reference book is finally available. [Via Michael Rys] Dr. Rys is talking about just published (February 2004) "XQuery : The XML Query Language" book. Michael Brundage is Technical Lead for XQuery processing at Microsoft and the recommendations are so weighty... I feel I want this book ...