Re: Query Languages for XML

Joe Lapp (jlapp@acm.org)
Sun, 16 Nov 1997 14:33:42 -0500


Paul Prescod <papresco@technologist.com> wrote:
>[...] As I understand it, you can create a
>"HTML form element" flow object and an "HTML input element" flow object
>within it. [...]
>DSSSL has no provisions for adding flow object types in DSSSL code. So
>we are essentially talking about the DSSSL implementation language (Java
>or C, probably) [...]

I'm not sure that this approach addresses the need to have a standard
mechanism by which (server-side) XML documents are updated. We'd simply
be relegating the standard to being defined by OMG IDL interfaces, as is
done in DOM. We could rely on (future) DOM-defined query mechanisms,
except that the DOM approach does not provide the kind of flexibility
that an XML-based language would provide. For example, in the DOM
approach, our queries must be programs, whether they are written in Java,
C, C++, VB, or some script language. But then we'd wish we had defined
the script language. User's wouldn't have to learn a different language
for generating queries on each platform, and the queries themselves
would be transportable between platforms.