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Comment on XML-QL Submission

W3C is pleased to receive the XML-QL submission from AT&T. The submission presents a query language for semi-structured data which is what XML documents inherently are. A high-level query language for XML documents is necessary as users need a programming language-independent way of exchanging queries. These queries will improve the reusability of existing XML documents.

XML-QL allows users to query for parts of XML documents given a list of constraints. These constraints can be defined in terms of element existence or matching attribute or element content. XML-QL is not limited to queries on a single XML document but supports queries over several documents. XML-QL also provides constructs for building new documents on-the-fly thus enabling document transformations.

The submission is related to the following activities of W3C:

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

The future work on XML includes the definition of the XML data model. XML-QL presents a definition of such a data model that is the basis for the XML-QL constructs.

Extensible Style Language

XML-QL constructs for matching content and transforming documents as query results are also present as pattern and template, respectively, in the 1st XSL working draft.

Document Object Model (DOM)

Future work on DOM Level 2 plans to address querying of XML document structures.

Internationalization (I18N)

The XML-QL query language does string matching for which requirements have been set by a working draft of the I18N working group.

Next Steps

W3C will invite the following Working Groups to review the specification

• XML WG
• XSL WG
• DOM WG
• I18N WG

The W3C membership is invited to discuss the disposition of the submission in the w3c-ac-forum mailing list or to advise the director in confidence via the W3C staff contact.

Disclaimer: Placing a Submission on a Working Group agenda does not imply endorsement by either the W3C Staff or the participants of the Working Group, nor does it guarantee that the Working Group will agree to take any specific action on a Submission.