[xquery-talk] At risk: Static typing

[Torsten Grust]

Dear all,

  I am happy to see the XQuery-related W3C Candidate Recommendations.
That's a significant step and I'm looking forward to see 'Candidate'
prefix go away.

I saw that the CR lists a few features to be at risk (to be removed from
the language specifcation if no implementations exist by the end of the
CR period, most probably sometime in spring 2006).  This list contains
the item 'Static typing'.

I was quite surprised to see this since, from the very first moment I
heard of and worked with XQuery, I felt that static typing is an
integral characteristic of the language.  Even more so since we stared
to implement our own processor for the language.  There were times when
our project literally revolved around type inference and the benefits
you can derive from it.

In this context, my question is: to which extent need I be ''worried''
that static typing will not make it into the Recommendation?

Best wishes,
   --Torsten

P.S.  I understand that the Galx static typing implementation undergoes
a major rewrite.  We're even prepared to help, i.e., tweak our
implementation of static typing such that it counts as an implementation
in the eyes of the formal W3C process. ;-)

-- 
  | Prof. Dr. Torsten Grust                         grust at in.tum.de |
  |                                 http://www-db.in.tum.de/~grust/ |
  |     Database Systems - Technische Universität München (Germany) |