Re: [Qexo-general] Xquery newbie questions

[Per Bothner]

address@hidden wrote:

> First of all, I'm just trying to type in some of the examples from the
> "What is XQuery?" document, and some of them don't seem to work. I don't
> know if it's because of typos in the tutorial, or something I'm doing
> wrong. For example, in the "Sequences" section, when I type in the
> following line:
>
> let $a := 3,4
>
> I get the following error message:
>
> xquery[1]: let $a := 3,4
> <stdin>:1:14: missin $NAME after ','

Oops - that should have been:

let $a := (3,4)

I've updated it.

> Some of the other examples don't seem to work, either, and in some cases
> even cause an exception to be thrown, even though I type them in exactly as
> shown in the tutorial.

Could you tell me which ones, so I can fix it?

You may be using an older version of Qexo.  Best is to try the latest
CVS version, but kawa-1.7beta2 should be close.  (I'm hoping to
release a 1.7 release candidate today.)

> I'm also trying to run some of the examples in "Early Adopter XQuery" by
> Cagle et al, but without much luck. I realize that some features may not be
> implemented in Qexo yet, but nothing seems to work.

Note that that book uses upper case keywords, as in
  FOR $book IN ... RETURN ...
That is no longer allowed - you have to use lower-case keywords:
  for $book in ... return ...

> Is the book out of date already?

Yes.

> Can someone suggest any other books on XQuery? There doesn't seem
> to be much available yet.

I've co-writing "XQuery Kick Start" with various people (including
Cagle), but it hasn't been published yet, and we're still revising
it for the latest draft specification.  Soon, hopefully ...
--
        --Per Bothner
address@hidden   http://per.bothner.com/