XQuery Scripting Extension 1.0 Requirements

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This document is governed by the 1 March 2017 W3C Process Document.

This is a Working Group Note as described in the Process Document. It was developed by the W3C XML Query Working Group, which is part of the XML Activity.

This Working Group Note has been published in order to document the work that the XML Query Working Group has done in the area of providing an imperative extension to XQuery. The WG was unable to achieve consensus on several significant aspects of this technology and determined to terminate work on the project in mid-2014.

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1 Goals

This document describes the requirements for the XQuery Scripting Extensions. XQuery [XQuery 1.0] is a functional language that is Turing-complete and well suited to write code that ranges from simple queries to complete applications. However, some categories of applications are more easily implemented by combining XQuery capabilities with some imperative features, such as the ability to explicitly manage internal states. The same issue stands for XQuery enriched with the [XQuery Update Facility 1.0] (hereafter, XQuery With Updates). The scripting extension is intended to overcome this problem, and allow programmers to write such applications without relying on embedding XQuery into an external language.

2 Usage Scenarios

The following usage scenarios describe ways in which the XQuery Scripting Extension may be used in various environments, and represent a wide range of activities and needs that illustrate the problem space to be addressed. They are intended to be used as design cases during the development of the XQuery Scripting Extension, and should be reviewed when critical decisions are made. These usage scenarios should also prove useful in helping non-members of the XML Query Working Group understand the intent and goals of the project.

While XQuery is very well suited to perform the main tasks of XML exploration and transformation that are common to most of these cases, some limited extensions would make it easier to use XQuery to write some complex applications that belong to the following usage scenarios.

2.1 Applications that perform complex manipulations on persistent XML data: Writing applications that modify persistent data, stored in files or in databases. Such applications may need to operate on data in stages, and may need to verify that the modified data meet some constraints.
2.2 Complex XML to XML transformations: Writing code that performs complex XML to XML transformations.
2.3 Implementation of web services: Writing code that implements a web service, with the ability to access and modify persistent XML data.
2.4 Processing RSS feeds: Writing code that generates or aggregates RSS feeds.
2.5 Web service message composition and orchestration: Writing code that orchestrates web services.
2.6 XML application integration: Writing scripting code that calls both XQuery With Updates and external functions, which may manipulate state and perform side-effects.
2.7 XML data cleaning or normalization: Writing code that performs data cleaning operations.
2.8 XML data integration: Writing code that accesses multiple data sources with the ability of reflecting updates from the integrated data to the data sources.
2.9 XML data verification: Expressing complex constraints on XML data.

3 Requirements

3.1 Terminology

In this specification the words must, must not, should, should not, may and recommended, when are to be interpreted as described in [RFC 2119]. When these words are used in this technical sense, they occur as a hyperlink to [RFC 2119]. These words will also be used with their conventional English meaning, in which case there is no hyperlink.

XQuery With Updates: This term identifies XQuery extended with the [XQuery Update Facility 1.0].
Side-effects: We say that an expression has side-effects if its evaluation may affect the external environment or may affect the result of the subsequent evaluation of another expression.

3.2 General Requirements

3.2.1 Compatibility with other extensions: The XQuery Scripting Extension must not preclude the use of the other XQuery extensions developed by the Working Group.
3.2.2 Protocol Independence: The XQuery Scripting Extension must be defined independently of any protocols with which it is used.
3.2.3 Language Syntax: The XQuery Scripting Extension must have more than one syntax binding. One syntax must be convenient for humans to read and write. One syntax must be expressed in XML in a way that reflects the underlying structure of the operations.
3.2.4 Static Type Checking: The XQuery Scripting Extension should provide an optional static type checking feature.
3.2.5 Ease of programming: The XQuery Scripting Extension may include syntactic constructs to facilitate common programming tasks.

3.3 Relationship to XQuery

3.3.1 Based on Data Model: The XQuery Scripting Extension must be defined on the [XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model].
3.3.2 Based on XQuery: The XQuery Scripting Extension must be based on XQuery. The Scripting Extension may constrain the evaluation order more than XQuery evaluation model, but the evaluation of an expression that belongs to the syntax of XQuery must result in a value, or in an error, that is one of those allowed by XQuery semantics.
3.3.3 Based on XQuery With Updates: The XQuery Scripting Extension should be based on XQuery With Updates. If it is based on XQuery With Updates, it may constrain the evaluation order in ways that are not required by XQuery With Updates evaluation model. However, if both XQuery With Updates and the XQuery Scripting Extension specify a result value for a given expression, they must specify the same result value.
3.3.4 Optimization: The XQuery Scripting Extension should be designed in such a way that the ability of a processor to optimize queries or parts of a query that make no use of the extension is not compromised.

3.4 Functionalities

3.4.1 Controlling the order of evaluation of functions and expressions that have side-effects: It must be possible for the programmer to control the evaluation order of expressions and function calls that perform side-effects.
3.4.2 Preserving state during computation: It must be possible to write code where pieces of data are bound to variables which are passed to further stages of the computation, and it must be possible to modify the value associated to such variables.
3.4.3 Returning values from expressions that have side-effects: It must be possible to write code that has side-effects and returns a value.
3.4.4 Ability to see side-effects during computation: It must be possible for an expression to observe some side-effects caused by other expressions.
3.4.5 Error handling: It must be possible to control error propagation and to perform alternative actions when the evaluation of an expression raises an error.
3.4.6 Controlling the scope of snapshot, isolation, atomicity: The extension may provide the ability to control the scope of snapshots. The extension may provide the ability to identify pieces of code whose execution should be isolated from the outer environment. It may be possible to indicate that some pieces of code must be executed atomically, with respect to failures.