XQuery Hullabaloo

    There’s been quite a stir recently on the W3C’s XQuery. In the last three months, I’ve repeatedly been asked two questions, mainly by press and analysts: ‘When is XQuery going to happen?’ and ‘Is XQuery really going to happen?’  The answers are ‘now’ and ‘yes.’

    Related to the question of when XQuery will happen is the ‘Why is it taking so long to become a standard?’ question. Seems like a little history lesson is in order here. Let’s take a look at the history of SQL, thanks to the folks at the International DB2 User Group:

The original version of SQL was called SEQUEL (Structured English QUery Language) and it was designed by IBM research in San Jose, California in the early 1970s. The first commercial implementation of SQL was in 1979 by Oracle Corporation (then known as Relational Software, Inc.).

In October 1986, ANSI approved a basic version of SQL as the official standard. Most SQL implementations since have included many non-standard extensions to the ANSI standard. ANSI updated the standard in 1989 to include data integrity enhancements and again, more substantially in 1992 to a new standard commonly known as SQL2. Further enhancements have been made to the SQL standard to include support for a Call Level Interface (CLI) and stored procedures.

So let's compare:

• SQL
  • Invented: 1971/2
  • First Implementation: 1979
  • Standard: 1986
• XQuery
  • Invented: 1998/9
  • First Implementations: circa 2000 (incl. Ipedo)
  • Standard: Expected 2006

    So, though the origins and circumstances are different, XQuery is set to become a standard in half the time it took SQL!  Not bad for a language that many believe to be even more complex and powerful.

    On the second question, XQuery is really going to happen because it is already happening. Just like SQL, implementations of XQuery are preceding final standardization. Customers, including our own, have been using XQuery for years now to help integrate and manage data and content in applications ranging from corporate dashboards to system management to online music sales. Customers use it because it is useful. Sorry if that sounds obvious, but it seems that there are some who believe customers are all waiting to see the white smoke rise from the W3C working group conclave.

    By last count, there are over 40 commercial and open source products that provide or include support for XQuery. Every major database vendor – IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft – has announced that they will soon be in beta. With every month, we hear about more vendors interested in using it for new applications (some have even suggested XQuery for slicing and dicing blog content - see John Udell's XQuery Adventures).

 At the point, XQuery seems to me less a question than a fait accompli. That’s good news for all those customers out there with real work to do.

Comments

[Hussain Al-Jeshi]

Actually, this is one of few documents available on the web which compare XQuery and SQL.

Really useful