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XPath/XQuery

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

W3C XML path language; W3C XML query language

Definition

XPath (XML path language) and XQuery (XML query language) are query languages defined by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) for querying XML documents.

XPath is a language based on path expressions that allows the selection of parts of a given XML document. In addition it also allows some minor computations resulting in values such as strings, numbers or booleans. The semantics of the language is based on a representation of the information content of an XML document as an ordered tree. An XPath expression consist usually of a series of steps that each navigate through this tree in a certain direction and select the nodes in that direction that satisfy certain properties.

XQuery is a declarative, statically typed query language for querying collections of XML documents such as the World Wide Web, a file system or a database. It is based on the same interpretation of XML documents as XPath, and includes XPath as a...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Brundage M. XQuery: The XML Query Language. Pearson Higher Education, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, USA, 2004.

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  2. Chamberlin D.D., Robie J., and Florescu D. Quilt: An XML query language for heterogeneous data sources. In Proc. 3rd Int. Workshop on the World Wide Web and Databases, 2000, pp. 53–62.

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  3. Hidders J., Paredaens J., Vercammen R., and Demeyer S. A light but formal introduction to XQuery. In Database and XML Technologies, 2nd Int. XML Database Symp., 2004, pp. 5–20.Toronto, Canada.

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  4. Katz H., Chamberlin D., Kay M., Wadler P., and Draper D. XQuery from the experts: A guide to the W3C XML query language. Addison-Wesley Longman, Boston, MA, USA, 2003.

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  5. Melton J. and Buxton S. Querying XML: XQuery, XPath, and SQL/XML in context. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA, USA, 2006.

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  6. Walmsley P. XQuery. O’Reilly Media, 2007.

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  7. W3C. W3C XML query (XQuery). http://www.w3????.org/XML/Query/.

  8. W3C. XML path language (XPath), version 1.0, W3C recommendation 16 November 1999. http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/, November 1999.

  9. W3C. XML path language (XPath) 2.0, W3C recommendation 23 January 2007. http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/ January 2007.

  10. W3C. XQuery 1.0: An XML query language, W3C recommendation 23 January 2007. http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/ January 2007.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium

    Jan Hidders

Authors
  1. Jan Hidders
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  2. Jan Paredaens
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Hidders, J., Paredaens, J. (2009). XPath/XQuery. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_774

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