What is XQuery? Why should I use XQuery? Where can I use XQuery? The XQuery FAQ is list of Frequently-Asked Questions about the World Wide Web Consortium's XML Query Language (XQuery). It is intended as a beginner's guide for users, developers, managers, or any interested reader getting started with XQuery technologies. Got an XQuery question? add it to the XQuery FAQ today!

Various XQuery use-cases from different industries, including aerospace and healtchare, which illustrate how developers are using XQuery technologies to simplify middleware applications, including Web services, Service Oriented Architectures (SOA)and other XML data integration projects.

The widespread adoption of XML has profoundly altered the way that information is exchanged within and between enterprises. XML, an extensible, text-based markup language, describes data in a way that is both hardware- and software-independent. As such, it has become a standard of choice for a growing number of Web services and Service Oriented Architectures. With a vast amount of data being published in XML format by multiple sources, the need has arisen for an easy and efficient means of extracting and manipulating this information. XQuery has emerged as an ideal way to aggregate data from Web services, relational databases, and other applications that employ XML. This XQuery tutorial explains XQuery's use as a report-generation technology, for aggregating data from multiple sources. The tutorial uses real-world data from a stock-quote Web service, and combining that information with historical company data stored in a relational database and presented as XML. In this tutorial, the historical data is being enhanced with live data about the current stock price, which is being retrieved via a Web-service call. Once the data is aggregated, it can be presented in any number of formats.

Free online XQuery demonstration videos which cover how to develop XQuery applications using Stylus Studio's XQuery Tools. "Introduction to the XQuery Mapper" provides an overview of how to connect to query and aggregate XML sources in a powerful, standards-compliant way. "Advanced XQuery Mapping", covers in greater depth the use of Stylus Studio's advanced XQuery development tools to aggregate data from multiple XML sources for use in run time application. (Requires Windows Media Player)

A DevX online poll which shows that a majority of software developers currently use or plan to use XQuery technologies. According to the non-scientific poll of 302 software developers, 43% said that "We implemented XQuery and it's incredibly useful"; another 16% said that "We'll be using [XQuery] soon, too." DevX is the premier online technical information source for application development professionals.

The XQuery language is designed specifically for XML programming and data integration, and programmers are more productive using XQuery for these tasks. However, many enterprise applications are built on the Java platform, and often require functionality not found in XQuery; for instance, many XML programs need to use the Web Services functionality of J2EE. On the Java platform, XML is accessed and manipulated as a DOM tree, a SAX stream, or as a StAX stream. The XQuery API for Java, currently under development as JSR 225, lets programmers have the best of both worlds, using XQuery for XML programming and data integration, with full access to the J2SE and J2EE platforms. XQJ allows a Java program to connect to XML data sources, prepare and issue XQueries, and process the results as XML. This functionality is similar to that of JDBC® Java API for SQL, but the query language for XQJ is XQuery. This article shows how XQJ is used to issue XQueries and obtain results. Next, it shows how XQJ can be used to query DOM trees, perform joins between XML and relational sources, obtain results using StAX, and issue prepared XQueries (similar to JDBC's prepared statements). Finally, we show four complete, working XQJ programs, including one that uses StAX to handle output. These programs are based on the Early Draft Review of JSR-225, released in May 2004. Code examples were tested with a pre-release version of DataDirect XQuery™, which implements XQuery and XQJ.

The Stylus Studio XQuery Zone, featuring XQuery tutorials, XQuery use-cases, XQuery articles, XQuery specifications, XQuery video demonstrations, and other free XQuery resources.

DataDirect Technologies, provider of components for connecting software to data, today announced its top 10 XML and XQuery predictions for 2005. The coming year will bring many new developments to XQuery, the highly anticipated language for querying and creating XML documents, that will ultimately lead to a complete overhaul in the way software applications are built.

Either way, as it turns out it is Amelia Lewis who originally penned the Quote of the Day that so nicely fit into the Masochistic theme here at . Now I have to ask myself "am I really grateful that we as XSLT developers have found the Peanut Butter to go with our XSLT Jelly in Ada" "Hit me harder Ada! Do it! Come on! I like it!" Hmmm... Well, while I ponder the thought of being Ada's sexual punching bag (and like it!) I will get on with my morning. Lets see... should I A) write code B) write code, or C) go for coffeee, then come back and write code

This tutorial shows you how to use XQuery to transform a specific XML vocabulary into RDF using RDF/XML as an intermediary medium. The query that you'll develop exhibits a number of basic XQuery syntactic features. The syntactic mechanisms discussed are useful both in this particular exercise and in transforming between XML vocabularies in general. A discussion of available tools covers several common XQuery processors, as well as an online RDF validation service that's used to check the correctness of the final RDF. RDF and RDF/XML are explained in sufficient detail (albeit briefly) that novice readers should be able to understand the context of what's going on.

In the discussion with Stylus Studio's Ivan Pedruzzi, Mr. Hunter talks about his recent work on XQuery and XQJ technologies, providing his take on how these technologies are likely to reshape the way Java and XML applications are built. A must read!!!

DataDirect Technologies, Bedford, Mass., provides components for connecting software to data. Developers use these components to develop and deploy business applications across all major databases and platforms, and to connect those applications to a range of data sources.

Metafy LLC has released an update for Anthracite, bringing it to version 1.0.7. Anthracite is a utiltiy designed for Internet based information mining. The update features enhanced Google searching and bug fixes.

XQuery or XML Query Language is a W3C specification (http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery) designed to provide a flexible and standardized way of searching through (semi-structured) data that is either physically stored as XML or virtualized as XML (such as XML Views over relational data). To give you an analogy, SQL is used to query relational data, XQuery is a standard language for querying XML data. In addition, XQuery also allows general processing of XML (such as creating nodes). Currently in the last call working draft status, the W3C XQuery specification will hopefully get the recommendation status this year. This article is an introduction to XQuery language. It is based on November 2003 working draft. (Click here to see the changes made to 23rd July 2004 XQuery 1.0 Working Draft.)

Everybody needs a home and now programmers working with XQuery have one on the Web. The xq:zone (http://xqzone.marklogic.com/) is sponsored by Mark Logic Corp., a San Mateo, Calif.-based developer of a database product for disparate content that makes extensive use of XQuery. The xq:zone is intended to provide help for developers working with the W3C standard for querying collections of XML data, including unstructured data, said Jason Hunter, lead applications engineer and XQuery guru at Mark Logic.

XQuery or XML Query Language is a W3C specification (http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery) designed to provide a flexible and standardized way of searching through (semi-structured) data that is either physically stored as XML or virtualized as XML (such as XML Views over relational data). To give you an analogy, SQL is used to query relational data, XQuery is a standard language for querying XML data. In addition, XQuery also allows general processing of XML (such as creating nodes). Currently in the last call working draft status, the W3C XQuery specification will hopefully get the recommendation status this year. This article is an introduction to XQuery language. It is based on November 2003 working draft.

The XML Query Working Group and the XSL Working Group have released five updated Working Drafts.

DataDirect Technologies, the leading provider of components for connecting software to data, today announced the development of DataDirect XQuery(TM), an embeddable, standards-based software product that enables Java(TM) developers to access both relational and XML data sources using a single query. Built to accommodate XQuery, the new language for querying and creating XML documents, DataDirect XQuery will join DataDirect Technologies' comprehensive offering of data connectivity components to simplify application development, allow portability across databases and ease application deployment.

XQuery 1.0 still has to reach W3C Recommendation status, but the available implementations and technology previews show that it is a very potent query language.

I posted the T-SQL XQuery demo. I will add the .Net Framework Xquery demo later. Also, Kent has written up a synopsis of the presentation. This time, I have no further comments :-). Thanks to all who showed up for the last presentation on a Friday afternoon. And congrats to the two winners of the XQuery books. There were lots of questions and though competition.