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 ambitious new technology, covering its history and development to date, and what changes might occur in the future before it is ratified. We present easy-to-follow introductions to the XQuery language 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, we look at .NET and Java classes which you can use to incorporate XQuery into your own work and a basic case study demonstrating how to build your own XQuery engine.

What does this book cover?

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
How to set about building your own XQuery engine