If you work with XML, Web services, or Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), you will likely benefit from the emerging XML Query (XQuery) standard. XQuery is not even a formally accepted standard, yet dozens of implementations help software architects and developers every day. What began as a standard for querying XML documents now includes the next-generation standards for XML selection (XPath 2), XML serialization, full-text search, and functional XML data modeling. A project of this size is bound to have much myth and misunderstanding that needs to be debunked. Here are some of the more common myths and misunderstandings surrounding XQuery.
- Misunderstanding: Database companies see XQuery as direct competition to their core businesses
- Myth: XQuery will replace XSLT
- Myth: XQuery will replace SQL
- Misunderstanding: To adopt XQuery, you must abandon procedural programming for object programming
- Myth: XQuery is more difficult to use than JDOM, JAXP, and other XML parsing APIs
- Myth: XQuery is difficult to learn to use
- >Misunderstanding: XQuery is not product; XQuery is just a layer in a stack somewhere
- Misunderstanding: XQuery is not important in improving Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) performance and complexity
- Misunderstanding: XQuery does not have a significant role to play in data transformation
- Misunderstanding: XQuery offers nothing to On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) and data warehousing applications
- Myth: XQuery will not scale to handle large datasets; XQuery will never be as fast as relational databases
- Misunderstanding: Aren’t XPath and XQuery the same thing?
- Misunderstanding: XQuery lacks an update mechanism
- Myth: The XQuery specification will never achieve RFC status
- Myth: XQuery supports token-based text searches