XML Query Language

Advisor: Prof. Zaniolo

Hung-chih Yang
Ling-Jyh Chen
 Motivation
• As increasing amounts of information are stored,
exchanged, and presented using XML, the ability to
intelligently query XML data sources becomes
increasingly important.
• One of the great strengths of XML is its flexibility in
representing many different kinds of information
from diverse sources.
• To exploit this flexibility, an XML query language
must provide features for retrieving and interpreting
information from these diverse sources.
Desiderata for an XML query language
• Expressive power
• Semantics
• Compositionality
• Schema
• Program manipulation
Different query languages for XML
• XPath & XQL: path expression syntax suitable for
hierarchical documents
• XML-QL: binding variables and using bound
variables to create new structures
• SQL: SELECT-FROM-WHERE pattern for
restructuring data
• OQL: ODMG
• Quilt: accept a lot of advantages from above XML
query languages, and it’s the immediate ancestor
of XQuery
 What’s XQuery

Relational SQL
database

XML document
/database XQuery
 What’s XQuery (cont.)
• XQuery is designed to meet the requirements
identified by the W3C XML Query Working Group
“XML Query 1.0 Requirements” and the use cases
in “XML Query Use Cases”.
• XQuery is designed to be a small, easily
implementable language.
• XQuery is flexible enough to query a broad
spectrum of XML information sources, including
both databases and documents.
• XQuery defines a human-readable syntax for that
language
 What’s Xquery (cont.)
• The basic building block of XQuery is the
expression
• XQuery is a functional language (at least
the spec claimed it to be)
• XQuery is a strongly-typed language
 XQuery vs XSLT
Reinventing the Wheel?

– XSLT is document-driven; XQuery is program

driven
– XSLT is written in XML; XQuery is not
– An assertion (unproven): XSLT 2.0 can do
everything XQuery can do
 XQuery concepts
A query in XQuery is an expression that:

– Reads a number of XML documents or

fragments
– Returns a sequence of well-formed XML
fragments
 The principal forms of XQuery
expressions
• Primary
– The basic primitives of the language including literals,
variables, function calls and the use of parentheses to
control precedence of operation
• Path
– Locates nodes within a tree, and returns a sequence of
distinct nodes in document order
• Sequence
– An ordered collection of zero or more items, where an
item may be an atomic value or a node. An item is
identical to a sequence of length one containing that
item. Sequences are never nested.
 The principal forms of XQuery
expressions (cont.)
• Arithmetic
– Xquery provides arithmetic operators for addition,
subtraction, multiplication, division, and modulus.
• Comparison
– Xquery provides four kinds of comparisons: value,
general, node, and order comparisons.
• Logical
– A logical expression is either an and-expression or an
or-expression. The value of a logical expression is
always one of the boolean values: true or false.
 The principal forms of XQuery
expressions (cont.)
• Contructor
– Constructors can create XML structures within a query.
There are constructors for elements, attributes, CDATA
sections, processing instructions, and comments.
• FLWR
– XQuery provides a FLWR expression for iteration and for
binding variables to intermediate results. This kind of
expression is often useful for computing joins between two
or more documents and for restructuring data. The name
"FLWR", pronounced "flower", stands for the keywords for,
let, where, and return, the four clauses found in a FLWR
expression.
 The principal forms of XQuery
expressions (cont.)
• Sorting
– A sorting expression provides a way to control the order of
items in a sequence.
• Conditional
– XQuery supports a conditional expression based on the
keywords if, then, and else.
• Quantified
– Quantified expressions support existential and universal
quantification. The value of a quantified expression is
always true or false.
 The principal forms of XQuery
expressions (cont.)
• Datatypes
– Runtime type checking and manipulation
• Validate
– A validate expression validates its argument with respect to
the in-scope schema definitions, using the schema
validation process described in XML Schema.
 XQuery Example 1
Xquery: Find all books with a price of $39.95
document("bib.xml")/bib/book[price = 39.95]
Result:
<book year="2000">
<title>Data on the Web</title>
<author><last>Abiteboul</last><first>Serge</first></author>
<author><last>Buneman</last><first>Peter</first></author>
<author><last>Suciu</last><first>Dan</first></author>
<publisher>Morgan Kaufmann Publishers</publisher>
<price> 39.95</price>
</book>
 XQuery Example 2
XQuery: Find the title of all books published before 1995
document("bib.xml")/bib/book[@year < 1995]/title
Result:
<title>TCP/IP Illustrated</title>
<title>Advanced Programming in the Unix environment</title>
 XQuery Example 3 (for loop)
XQuery: List books published by Addison-Wesley after 1991,
including their year and title.
<bib>
{
for $b in document("bib.xml")/bib/book
where $b/publisher = "Addison-Wesley" and $b/@year > 1991
return
<book year="{ $b/@year }">
{ $b/title }
</book>
}
</bib>
 XQuery Example 3 (for loop)
Result:
<bib>
<book year="1994">
<title>TCP/IP Illustrated</title>
</book><book year="1992">
<title>Advanced Programming in the Unix
environment</title>
</book>
</bib>
 XQuery Example 4 (Join)
XQuery: For each book found at both bn.com and amazon.com, list
the title of the book and its price from each source.
<books-with-prices>
{
for $b in document("bib.xml")//book,
$a in document("reviews.xml")//entry
where $b/title = $a/title
return
<book-with-prices>
{ $b/title }
<price-amazon>{ $a/price }</price-amazon>
<price-bn>{ $b/price }</price-bn>
</book-with-prices>
}
</books-with-prices>
 XQuery Example 4 (Join)
Result:
<books-with-prices>
<book-with-prices>
<title>TCP/IP Illustrated</title>
<price-amazon><price>65.95</price></price-amazon>
<price-bn><price> 65.95</price></price-bn>
</book-with-prices><book-with-prices>
<title>Advanced Programming in the Unix environment</title>
<price-amazon><price>65.95</price></price-amazon>
<price-bn><price>65.95</price></price-bn>
</book-with-prices><book-with-prices>
<title>Data on the Web</title>
<price-amazon><price>34.95</price></price-amazon>
<price-bn><price> 39.95</price></price-bn>
</book-with-prices>
</books-with-prices>
 XQuery Example 5 (Grouping +
quantifier)
XQuery: For each author in the bibliography, list the author's name and
the titles of all books by that author, grouped inside a "result" element.
<results>
{
for $a in distinct-values(document("bib.com")//author)
return <result>
{ $a }
{
for $b in document("http://bib.com")/bib/book
where some $ba in $b/author satisfies deep-equal($ba,$a)
return $b/title
}
</result>
}
</results>
 XQuery Example 5 (Grouping +
<results> quantifier)
Result: <result>
<author>
<last>Stevens</last>
<first>W.</first>
</author>
<title>TCP/IP Illustrated</title>
<title>Advanced Programming in the Unix environment</title>
</result>
<result>
<author>
<last>Abiteboul</last>
<first>Serge</first>
</author>
<title>Data on the Web</title>
</result>
……
</results>
 XQuery Example 6 (Sorting)
XQuery: List the titles and years of all books published by Addison-
Wesley after 1991, in alphabetic order.
<bib>
{
for $b in document("www.bn.com/bib.xml")//book
where $b/publisher = "Addison-Wesley" and $b/@year > 1991
return
<book>
{ $b/@year }
{ $b/title }
</book>
sortby (title)
}
</bib>
 XQuery Example 6 (Sorting)
Result:
<bib>
<book year="1992">
<title>Advanced Programming in the Unix environment</title>
</book>
<book year="1994">
<title>TCP/IP Illustrated</title>
</book>
</bib>
 XQuery Example 7 (Recursion)
XQuery: Convert the sample document from "partlist" format to
"parttree" format.
define function one_level (element $p) returns element
{
<part partid="{ $p/@partid }" name="{ $p/@name }" >
{
for $s in document("partlist.xml")//part
where $s/@partof = $p/@partid
return one_level($s)
}
</part>
}
<parttree>
{
for $p in document("partlist.xml")//part[empty(@partof)]
return one_level($p)
}
</parttree>
 XQuery Example 7 (Recursion)
Result: <parttree>
<part partid="0" name="car">
<part partid="1" name="engine">
<part partid="3" name="piston"/>
</part>
<part partid="2" name="door">
<part partid="4" name="window"/>
<part partid="5" name="lock"/>
</part>
</part>
<part partid="10" name="skateboard">
<part partid="11" name="board"/>
<part partid="12" name="wheel"/>
</part>
<part partid="20" name="canoe"/>
</parttree>
 XQuery Example 8 (Sequence)
XQuery: In the Procedure section of Report1, what Instruments were
used in the second Incision?
for $s in document("report1.xml")//section[section.title = "Procedure"]
return ($s//incision)[2]/instrument

Result:

<instrument>electrocautery</instrument>
 XQuery practice
• XML Query Language Demo,
http://131.107.228.20
• X-Hive. Another nice-looking online demo,
http://217.77.130.189:8080/demos/xquery/index.html
• Qexo: The GNU Kawa implementation of
XQuery, http://www.gnu.org/software/qexo/
 Conclusion
• XQuery is a simple substitution of XSLT,
JSP, ASP, Servlet, CGI, PHP, etc.
• XQuery programs can accomplish most
tasks of other tools aforementioned, and yet
is much simplier to learn and easier to write.
• Possible direction is to extend XQuery for
UPDATE and INSERT to an XML database
• Still lack of support from industry till now
 Reference
• Jonathan Pinnock, et al. “Professional XML, 2nd edition”, ISBN:
1861005059, WROX Publishers, 2001
• Serge Abiteboul, Peter Buneman and Dan Suciu, “Data on the Web: from
Relations to Semistructured Data and XML”, ISBN 1-55860-622-X,
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2000
• World Wide Web Consortium, “XQuery 1.0. An XML Query Language”,
W3C Working Draft, Apr. 30, 2002
• World Wide Web Consortium, “XML Path Language (XPath) Version
1.0”, W3C Recommendation, Nov. 16, 1999
• Qexo: The GNU Kawa implementation of XQuery,
http://www.gnu.org/software/qexo/
• XQuery Tutorial
http://www.research.avayalabs.com/user/wadler/papers/xquery-tutorial/xquery-tutorial.pdf
• Don Chamberlin, Jonathan Robie, and Daniela Florescu, “Quilt: An XML
Query Language for Heterogeneous Data Sources”, WebDB 2000, Dallas,
May 2000