[xquery-talk] Screen-scraping with XQuery

R. Mark Volkmann mark at ociweb.com
Thu Mar 31 12:01:11 PST 2005


Quoting Erik Bruchez <ebruchez at orbeon.com>:

> In the following little thread, the author of the original article
> tries to make the point that learning XSLT is hell, and learning
> XQuery is bliss:
>
>
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/dw_thread.jsp?forum=181&thread=77692
>
> If this is true, this would suggest that developers are extremely
> sensitive to syntax! Or is there another factor? I don't think I agree
> with such as statement statement at this point, but I wonder if this
> opinion is shared.

I don't think it's too hard to learn either XSLT or XQuery.  However, I have a
strong preference for XQuery syntax over XSLT.  The main reason is the
verbosity of XSLT caused by using XML as a programming language.  A good
example of the verbosity I'm talking about is the difference between defining
and invoking a user-defined function in XQuery versus defining and invoking a
named template in XSLT.

Somewhat similarly, I prefer RELAX NG Compact syntax over W3C XML Schema and I
prefer Ruby syntax over Java syntax.  But I digress ... obviously I prefer
smaller syntax.  ;-)

--
R. Mark Volkmann
Partner, Object Computing, Inc.


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