[xquery-talk] Re: The State of Native XML databases

[John Snelson]

Andrew Welch wrote:
> On 8/21/07, John Snelson <john.snelson at oracle.com> wrote:
>> Andrew Welch wrote:
>>> Isn't the difference that one _looks like_ a date, but the other _is_
>>> an xs:date.
>> What _is_ an xs:date?
> 
> Something you can perform operations on using functions that expect an xs:date.

That's one possible answer. Of course, the framework allowing you to 
perform operations on the xs:date could easily be storing it as a 
string. Or maybe 3 non-negative integers. Or maybe the number of seconds 
since the year 0. Or...

Another answer is that an xs:date is any string which matches the 
lexical construct defined in the XML Schema spec.

John