XQuery

Book excerpt: 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.