XML Query Working Group Charter
The mission of the XML Query Working Group, part of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity, is to provide flexible query facilities to extract data from XML and virtual documents, such as contents of databases or other persistent storage that are viewed as XML via a mapping mechanism, on the Web.
| End date | 31 August 2017 |
|---|---|
| Confidentiality | Proceedings are Public |
| Chair | Andrew Coleman, IBM |
| Initial Team Contact (FTE %: 25) |
Liam Quin |
| Usual Meeting Schedule | Telcons: Weekly Ftf: 2 or 3 per year (including TPAC). |
Scope
The functionality of the XML Query language encompasses selecting whole documents or components of documents based on specified selection criteria, as well as constructing XML documents from selected components.
The goal of the XML Query Working Group is to produce and maintain a formal data model for XML documents with namespaces, a set of query functions and operators on that data model that is shared with XSLT, and then a query language with a concrete canonical syntax based on those operators. Functionalities include full-text search (as opposed to simple substring search), updating instances of the query data model, and (optionally) a set of XQuery Scripting Extensions intended to facilitate the use of XML Query in developing applications.
Success Criteria
The Working Group generally expects to demonstrate at least 2 interoperable implementations of all required and optional features of any new Specification before requesting to advance to Proposed Recommendation.
Deliverables
Because of a technical issue (maps) that caused a delay, the XQuery and XSL Working Groups decided to publish XQuery 3.0 without the maps feature and to publish an XQuery 3.1 shortly afterwards containing the maps feature, and other features determined necessary or desired for working with JSON as well as with XML, and aligned with XSLT 3. The 3.0 documents were published during the previous charter period, as planned, with only Full Text and Update remaining as not yet full Recommendations at the start of this new Charter period (Spring 2015); the 3.1 documents are moving toward Recommendation. There are no plans for 3.2 or other later documents.
Jointly with the XSL Working Group, a set of W3C Recommendations for version 3.1 of:
- XML Path Language (XPath)
- XQuery and XPath Data Model (XDM)
- XQuery and XPath Functions and Operators
- XSLT and XQuery Serialization
- XQuery and XPath Full Text
A set of W3C Recommendations for versions 3.0 and 3.1 of:
- XQuery Update Facility
- XQuery: An XML Query Language
- XML Syntax for XQuery (XQueryX)
Requirements and Use Case documents are expected to become Working Group Notes.
Other Deliverables
Test suites will be developed, published and maintained for each specification expected to become a W3C Recommendation.
The XQuery Working Group may also publish requirements and/or use cases for future versions of their documents.
The XML Query WG and the XSL WG have been maintaining XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 since their publication in Jan. 2007. These Recommendations were published as Second Editions in December 2010. No further work on 1.0/2.0 documents is planned.
Milestones
| Specification | FPWD | LC | CR | PR | Rec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Note: The group will document significant changes from this initial schedule on the group home page. | |||||
| Update 3.0 | N/A | February 2015 | July 2015 | September 2015 | December 2015 |
| 3.1 Specifications | N/A | N/A | N/A | June 2015 | September 2015 |
| Full Text 3.1 | June 2015 | October 2015 | January 2016 | April 2016 | July 2016 |
| Update 3.1 | August 2015 | December 2015 | March 2016 | August 2016 | November 2016 |
Note: The 3.1 release of XQuery and the shared documents may also coincide with a release of XSLT 3.1 to ensure that all the documents are aligned, although the XSLT Working Group has not committed to producing a 3.1 version of XSLT.
Timeline View Summary
- June 2015
- PR for 3.1
- FPWD for Full Text 3.1
- CR for Update 3.0
- July 2015
- August 2015
- FPWD for Update 3.1
- September 2015
- PR for Update 3.0
- Rec for 3.1
- October 2015
- LC for Full Text 3.1
- December 2015
- Rec for Update 3.0
- LC for Update 3.1
- January 2016
- CR for Full Text 3.1
- March 2016
- CR for Update 3.1
- April 2016
- PR for Full Text 3.1
- July 2016
- Rec for Full Text 3.1
- August 2016
- PR for Update 3.1
- November 2016
- Rec for Update 3.1
- February 2017
- Tea and biscuits
- May 2017
- (WG closes unless maintenance is needed)
Duration
The expiration date of this charter is 30 June 2017.
Dependencies
W3C Groups
- XSL
- The XPath 1.0 language was developed by the XSL Working Group. The XPath 2.0 language was jointly developed by the XSL Working Group and the XML Query Working Group. The groups also jointly developed several other documents supporting XPath and XSLT. The two groups will continue to collaborate on the development of XPath 3.x and its supporting documents.
Participation
To be successful, the XML Query Working Group is expected to have 6 or more active participants for its duration. Effective participation to XML Query Working Group is expected to consume half of a work day per week for each participant; two days per week for editors. The XML Query Working Group will allocate also the necessary resources for building Test Suites for each specification.
Participants are reminded of the Good Standing requirements of the W3C Process.
Communication
This group will conduct technical work on public mailing lists once this charter comes into effect, and this charter will then be updated to point to the new lists.
This group primarily conducts its work on the Member-only mailing list
w3c-xsl-query@w3.org (archive) shared with the XSL Working Group,
as well as various other lists:
w3c-xsl-query-wg@w3.org (archive),
member-query-fttf@w3.org
(archive)
and member-query-test@w3.org
(archive).
Public feedback happens through public-qt-comments@w3.org (archive).
Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the XML Query Working Group home page.
Patent Policy
This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis.
For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.
About this Charter
This charter for the XML Query Working Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.
The 2015 revision does not add any new deliverables.
Please also see the previous charter for this group.
Liam Quin, XML Activity Lead and Team Contact
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$Date: 2015/09/16 04:02:04 $