[xquery-talk] XQuery coding style: nested FLWOR expressions

[John Snelson]

I think there are definitely two camps of XQuery writers. Those that 
have learnt XQuery because it is the "SQL of XML" are tainted by their 
SQL background, and often don't realise that you can write an XQuery 
statement without a FLWOR clause.

Those of us that approach XQuery from an XML, XPath and XSLT background 
(myself included) are used to the ideas of the context item, inline 
predicates etc.

I guess this is a symptom of the way XQuery was conceived, designed and 
marketed. However, I'm not really sure that one way is arguably superior 
to the other - query processors are just going to have to optimise both 
methods to the same execution strategy, eventually.

John Snelson

Michael Kay wrote:
> I've been looking again recently at some of the XMark benchmark queries.
> 
> I'm wondering what it is about the language that makes people write things
> like this (Q9):
> 
> for $p in /site/people/person
> let $a := for $t in /site/closed_auctions/closed_auction
>           let $n := for $t2 in /site/regions/europe/item
>                        where  $t/itemref/@item = $t2/@id
>                        return $t2
>              where $p/@id = $t/buyer/@person
>              return <item> {$n/name} </item>
> return <person name="{$p/name}">{ $a }</person>
> 
> when they could have written
> 
> for $p in /site/people/person
> return <person name="{$p/name}"> { 
>   for $t in /site/closed_auctions/closed_auction[buyer/@person = $p/@id]
>   return <item> {/site/regions/europe/item[@id = $t/itemref/@item]/name}
> </item> 
> } </person>
> 
> Is it just a torture test for optimizers? Did the author think this was the
> best/easiest way to write the query? Does anyone else think it is? Is it the
> way SQL users' brains are wired?
> 
> Michael Kay
> http://www.saxonica.com/ 
> 
> 
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-- 
John Snelson, Berkeley DB XML Engineer
Sleepycat Software, Inc
http://www.sleepycat.com

Contracted to Sleepycat through Parthenon Computing Ltd
http://blog.parthcomp.com/dbxml