Comments on: XQuery on Rails

By: D. E.

D. E. — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:10:05 +0000

Interesting.

We (W3C work group) just got around publishing requirements for XQuery scripting extensions(http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery-sx-10-requirements/), and I am writing a draft specification. Everybody is welcome to submit suggestions.

By: Rusco

Rusco — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:11:17 +0000

Xquery on Rails is already here: it’s the Exist XML-DB (has XUpdate) together with the Formfaces XForms processor on the client!
Have Fun ! Rusco.

By: Elliotte Rusty Harold

Elliotte Rusty Harold — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 23:59:27 +0000

An XML file is not a database. But tens of thousands, maybe millions of documents inside one piece of software with query and index capabilities? That’s a database. The primary reason for XQuery is to move beyond single documents to collections of documents.

By: robet

robet — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 23:23:17 +0000

Databases are multi-user and transactional. XQuery may be useful as an additional parsing support. Why does it’s mere existence qualify XML files as a Database? IMS did that in 1964. It was found wanting.

By: peter royal

peter royal — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:52:10 +0000

you could definitely do that in rails, just plug it into ActiveRecord, and the rest of the stack will be fine.

just a matter of being able to introspect the schema of the store, as you said.

By: Elliotte Rusty Harold

Elliotte Rusty Harold — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:35:09 +0000

My thought was more along the lines of replacing the SQL part of Rails, not the Ruby part. That’s an interesting idea to though.

A little recognized but critical feature of Rails is that it does huge amounts of code generation. What code to generate is usually determined by reflecting on the database. My question is whether XQuery+XUpdate provides sufficient internal reflection capabilities to enable something like Rails (Quail?) to do all it needs to do, especially without resorting to database specific calls.

By: Elliotte Rusty Harold

Elliotte Rusty Harold — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:29:43 +0000

Because documents (books, articles, blogs, etc.) are better modeled as trees than tables. Neither’s a perfect fit, but trees work much better.

By: Joseph E. Davis

Joseph E. Davis — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:03:52 +0000

Why would publishing applications be better served by XQuery / XML than SQL databases?

By: John Cowan

John Cowan — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 16:06:31 +0000

I’m working on it; I’m one of the team on the Zorba XQuery project, which will implement not only Update for XQuery, but also enough non-functional facilities to make it a fully usable programming language (blocks, while loops, exceptions). We just spent the last two days hashing out most of the design.