[topicmapmail] XTM query language

[Anthony B. Coates]

** Reply to message from "Max Voskob" <vobla73@paradise.net.nz> on Mon, 22 Sep
2003 11:33:11 +1200

> I was investigating the progress in XTM query languages (thanx Lars for this
> paper -
> http://www.idealliance.org/papers/extreme03/author-pkg/2003/Garshol01/EML2003Garshol01.zip).
> 
> Have u considered using xQuery for this in the meantime?
> Are there any serious reasons not to do so?

This is question is coming up a lot, not just in the context of Topic Maps, but
for all data representations that have an XML serialisation.  The generic
answer is that XQuery is a useful tool, but it queries the serialised form,
rather than the underlying data model.  That means that your queries are
complicated by syntactic junk that is not real data, but is nonetheless
necessary to delimit a serialised format.

For some data representations, I suspect that some query tools will use XQuery
as an underlying engine, but hopefully the user will see queries expressed in
terms of the data that is real and applicable to the user.  I'm not sure that
XQuery would work for a Topic Map query engine.  That said, you could certainly
run XQueries over a canonical Topic Map, if a Topic Map engine/repository
exposed such an API.  If XQuery engines get sufficiently performant because of
the sheer effort some vendors put in, who knows, this could be workable.  Not
for a while though, I think.

	Cheers,
		Tony.
====
Anthony B. Coates, Director
Information Design, Messaging and Management
mailto:abcoates@idmm.co.uk
Mobile/Cell: +44 (79) 0543 9026
====
MDDL Editor (Market Data Definition Language)
http://www.mddl.org/
FpML AWG Member (Financial Products Markup Language)
http://www.fpml.org/