[xquery-talk] XQuery Visualization (GUI) for beginners
Jonathan Robie
jonathan.robie at datadirect.com
Mon Apr 24 11:58:09 PDT 2006
Tim Finney wrote:
> 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.
>
Hi Tim,
When you say XQuery is best understood in terms of set theory, I think
that may be particularly true of FLWOR expressions, but the general
forest-to-forest transformations of XQuery probably require a rather
different visual model than the tables-to-table model used for SQL.
Like Mike Kay, I am more comfortable with text than diagrams as the
syntax for queries. When I use Stylus Studio, I tend to keep the text
window open, and drag and drop from the data sources into the text of
the query (this is also how I use it for XSLT stylesheets). Used that
way, it really does save me time. Clearly, there are many people out
there who prefer to use the visual approach to constructing queries - I
assume these are the same people who like to use the graphical view of
Microsoft Access and other tools to construct their queries, and this is
not a small group. Personally, I find that any visual representation of
the language that is reasonably complete is also as complex to learn as
the language. But I don't use a graphical tool for SQL queries either....
Jonathan
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