[xquery-talk] XQuery and Web 2.0

[Weiqi Gao]

Daniela Florescu wrote:
> 
> I just  came back from Web 2.0 Expo in SF. I listened through lots of
> interesting presentations of various technologies for building mashups.
> 
> Needless to say, *nobody* mentioned the name XQuery.
> 
> Why !? XQuery has proven itself to be a great tool for Web 2.0 style mashup
> applications (especially after we'll add scripting capabilities). So why 
> is the Web 2.0 crowd totally unaware of all this body of work, that could make their 
> live much easier!?
> 
> I was wondering what people think about this.
> 
> Any ideas about how to change this situation?

The Web 2.0 crowd loves gimmicks.  And XQuery is the quintessential 
straight-faced academic + proprietary/big vendor specification.

Here's something to try:

1. The Web 2.0 crowd loves a catchy acronym.  They have LAMP, where the 
P originally referred to PHP, but can be substituted by Python, Perl, 
etc.  Why not rename XQuery PXQuery and claim a piece of the LAMP pie?

2. The Web 2.0 crowd loves open source.  Everything they talk about is 
open source.  Why not make all XQuery implementations open source, at 
least free as in free beer?

3. The Web 2.0 crowd loves a language that's deep and weird.  Nobody 
likes prototype based objects, yet JavaScript wins the day.  What does 
XQuery has that mystifies people?  FLOWR expressions just doesn't cut 
it.  Add something novel to XQuery, like Map-Reduce, or mandate tail 
call optimization.  Better yet, add REST support.  Ruby on Rails can add 
REST support, so can XQuery.

4. The Web 2.0 crowd loves everything Google/Amazon/Yahoo! does.  Paul 
Graham wrote an online store with Lisp and made millions, and has been 
milking that fact ever since.  Have him, or someone like him, write a 
CMS or something in XQuery, and then *sell it to Google* to make 
millions of dollors.  And then say things like "Google used XQuery to 
write their CMS."

5. This one should be obvious: There is no way that the Web 2.0 crowd 
will love XQuery *1.0*.  1.0 is so 1990's.  Call the next update XQuery 2.0!

Now, try these slogans out:

BOSTON, APRIL 1, 2009---The W3C released XQuery 2.0 today.  This refresh 
of the venerable XQuery 1.0, three years in the making, brings major new 
functionality into the specification,  chief among them the full support 
for REST,  highly parallel  and concurrent programming  with Map-Reduce, 
and  the spec mandated  full tail-call optimization  that will guarantee 
scalability and performance.  Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and fifteen XQuery 
engine vendors today also announced the Open Sourcing of their products. 
  Tim O'Reilly, the father of the phrase "Web 2.0" welcomed the W3C's 
move today: "With this release, XQuery is fully Web 2.0 buzzword compliant."

--
Weiqi Gao
weiqigao at speakeasy.net
http://www.weiqigao.com/blog/