Product Description

With the XQuery 1.0 standard, you finally have a tool that will make it much easier to search, extract and manipulate information from XML content stored in databases. This in-depth tutorial not only walks you through the XQuery specification, but also teaches you how to program with this widely anticipated query language.

XQuery is for query writers who have some knowledge of XML basics, but not necessarily advanced knowledge of XML-related technologies. It can be used both as a tutorial, by reading cover to cover, and as a reference, by using the comprehensive index and appendixes. Either way, you will find the background knowledge in namespaces, schemas, built-in types and regular expressions that is relevant to writing XML queries. This book provides:

• A high-level overview and quick tour of XQuery
• Information to write sophisticated queries, without being bogged down by the details of types, namespaces, and schemas
• Advanced concepts for users who want to take advantage of modularity, namespaces, typing and schemas
• Guidelines for working with specific types of data, such as numbers, strings, dates, URIs and processing instructions
• A complete alphabetical reference to the built-in functions and types

You will also learn about XQuery's support for filtering, sorting, and grouping data, as well as how to use FLWOR expressions, XPath, and XQuery tools for extracting and combining information. With this book, you will discover how to apply all of these tools to a wide variety of data sources, and how to recombine information from multiple sources into a single final output result.

Whether you're coming from SQL, XSLT, or starting from scratch, this carefully paced tutorial takes you through the final 1.0 standard in detail.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87450 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-30
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 510 pages

About the Author
Priscilla Walmsley has been working closely with XML Schema and XQuery for years. She was a member of the W3C XML Schema Working Group from 1999 to 2004. As a result of her work with XML Schema, Ms. Walmsley wrote the respected book "Definitive XML Schema" (Prentice Hall). Currently, Ms. Walmsley serves as Managing Director of Datypic (http://www.datypic.com), where she specializes in XML and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) related consulting and training.

Customer Reviews

Great X-Query book but needs more information.
The problem of this book is it doesn't give detailed information on how to implement X-Query on your computer. When you have Windows Vista, eXist doesn't work. Neither does WAMP. And unless you have heavy duty experience with SQL Server, this book is useless. The author of this book needs to include many more simple examples so that people like me can use the language. I might figure out how to use this someday, but it will be a long time before I do. That is so disappointing.

Must read... then must keep around.
XQuery has its logical side, but it's pretty easy to forget all the syntax rules and nuances associated with it. Without this book, I'd easily be cursing XQuery and everything associated with it.

It was a great read to get started, but it's become an indispensable reference for day-to-day work and play. With the 30 or so sticky-notes poking out the top, I find myself constantly in this book looking for not just answers, but ways to better use XQuery efficiently in a maintenance-friendly manner.

Good XQuery tutorial/reference
I needed to come up to speed with an XML database server (Mark Logic) and I found this book very useful for learning how to use XQuery. It was concise and provided many good examples. The presentation of chapters was somewhat episodic--you had to read the later chapters to find out how some of the topics turned out. This was probably due to the newness and complexity of the topic. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a chapter reorg for the 2nd edition.

In my case, the book covers only XQuery and does not cover the XQuery extensions and specifics of the XML database system I was using. Walmsley's book makes a great companion to the vendor documentation.