XQuery: The XML Query Language

This book will be for XQuery what The Java Programming Language is for Java: a

complete description of the language, suitable for both beginners and experts.

This book is what you need to understand the basic design goals of XQuery

and its application in real-world development. It provides solid coverage of

XQuery, and is appropriate as a tutorial and a reference. The W3C specification

is dense, poorly written, very formal and abstract, and does not contain many

examples--exactly what you'd expect from a formal specification. Consequently,

developers are starving for information about and examples of XQuery.

Because the formal specifications are most people's only source of information

about the standards, and because they are so difficult to absorb and internalize,

other developers and programmers are at a distinct disadvantage. Anyone who

wants to know what a particular XQuery expression is supposed to do, or how

to accomplish a particular task using XQuery, will turn to this book. Its many

examples make it very accessible.