[xquery-talk] XQuery Visualization (GUI) for beginners

[Tim Finney]

Michael,

I only remember a couple of things from my second year university
applied mathematics course, but one of them relates to what you say. The
lecturer (Mr Hood) said "everything in mathematics can be expressed
geometrically." (He did qualify that by saying that you can find some
nasty discontinuous functions as counterexamples.) I heard that Stephen
Hawking turns mathematical problems into geometrical problems in order
to solve them.

It seems to me that what XQuery does is best understood in terms of set
theory. If so, it is an eminently suitable candidate for symbolic
treatment.

You are right to object to cryptic icons and box-and-arrow diagrams.
However, if someone does a good job of mapping XQuery to a standard
symbolic notation then she will have done a great service. For a start,
it will help all of the right-brain types out there to understand what
the language does.

Tim Finney


Michael Kay wrote:

> I personally find visual tools for query (or stylesheet) building very
> difficult to use. I can relate to text and syntax, I have been using
> language to communicate since infancy. I find it much harder to
> understand
> the meaning of cryptic icons, or of box-and-arrow diagrams. Different
> diagrams look so similar, yet have such different semantics. I always
> want
> to know what the arrows actually mean. But there are other people who
> seem
> quite comfortable with them.
> 
>