[xquery-talk] XQuery Update: replacing element content with a sequence of nodes

[Jonathan Robie]

On 04/14/2011 08:17 AM, Florent Georges wrote:
> Andrew Welch wrote:
>
>> how about replacing the parent node itself instead:
>
>> replace node parent with <parent><one/><two/></parent>
>
> Yes, that's the conclusion I reached too.  But I thought replacing
> all the content of an element was a general-enough use case, so I
> thought I missed something.

Andrew's solution works unless your system relies on the identity of the 
parent element. If you have external references to a node, e.g. in some 
API, then replacing it in this way may not be visible via the external 
reference.

I could imagine a future version of XQuery Update that supports this use 
case directly, e.g.

replace content of node parent
with (<one/><two/>)

I'm not married to this syntax, but it's analogous to the existing 
"replace value of node".

Jonathan