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Aug
28

On Intelligent File Systems, XQuery and the Cloud

by Kurt Cagle

Cloud computing has largely passed through it's hype phase - that period where all kinds of magical characteristics are applied to it because no one really knows that much about it, and is shifting to the real world scenarios where people are actually building clouds and finding the limitations therein (and the cycle goes through the Trough of Despair).

Despite this incipient skeptical phase, there are some significant reasons to think hard about the combination of cloud computing and XML Databases, especially those such as MarkLogic or eXist-db that combine the database with a web app server. There are many ways of using such servers, though I believe one of the most powerful is to use a RESTful Services approach in conjunction with URL rewriting in order to create intelligent file systems.  Read more...
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Aug
26

O’Reilly Previews HTML 5 Reference for the iPhone/iPad

by Kurt Cagle

As yet another indication that publishing is shifting to the eBook world, O'Reilly Media is in the process of putting together a version of their popular HTML 5/XHTML Reference book specifically for Apple's iPhone/iPad. It will also work with Google's Android operating system, though the beta is still a little buggy there. Pay attention on what kind of hit count they get from these mobile devices.

Computer reference books actually make remarkably good fodder for mobile hand-helds as eBooks; they are generally structured as discrete topics rather than continuous narratives, and if you're coding on a laptop or desktop and need to look up an API call or how a particular tag is utilized, having your iPhone, Android or Kindle sitting as a quick finger stroke reference could prove very useful. For more information, check out their beta site at http://htmlref.labs.oreilly.com/.

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Aug
25

Common XQuery mistakes

by James Fuller

Michael Kay recently covered common mistakes made using XSLT, which made me think it maybe useful to do the same treatment with XQuery. A lot of the points Michael Kay raised in his article also directly applies to XQuery, that is:

  • new users struggle working with trees
  • new users typically misunderstand impact of side effects from the usage of external functions
  • new users consistently have issues with matching elements with namespaces

In no particular order of importance I present the most common errors I see users make when learning XQuery.

FLWOR must be obeyed

There is a whole class of mistakes related to developers insisting on using the FLWR structure in a free form way, that is use For, Let, Where, Order or Return in any kind of order.  Read more...
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Aug
21

Thoughts on Client side XQuery and Android

by Kurt Cagle

To a certain extent, I think those people that are looking to get XQuery into the browser are tilting at windmills, and frankly are wasting their time. It's not that I don't see advantages to having browsers be XQuery aware - far from it. The ability to both manipulate the DOM and to manipulate external data resources using XQuery would dramatically simplify a lot of the code written in JavaScript. The problem is that the JavaScript does exist, is in wide usage, and I see a language like Python or Ruby making its way into the browser before I see XQuery doing so. Building a JavaScript-based Xquery system is probably the cleanest approach to getting that support, but even that's probably a fool's errand.  Read more...
(561 words, 0 images, est. 2:15 mins reading time)

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Aug
19

Package Repository in eXist XML Database

by James Fuller

Over the past few weeks I have created and committed to eXist /trunk a new core extension for the eXist XML database which provides developers with the ability to manage external packages/dependencies.

If you have worked with other package management systems, like:

  • rpm
  • aptitude / apt get / dpkg / yum
  • CPAN Perl modules / PAR
  • Python eggs
  • Ruby gems
  • PHP Pear

then you should understand the goal of package management within eXist, e.g. make it easy for developers to create and distribute reusable components. This has been a percolating topic for the past year in the XML world and, in my opinion, can't come soon enough. Florent Georges is spearheading the charge here and I thank him for his work on EXPath, as well as his continuing contribution to eXist.  Read more...
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Aug
17

XML, UML and the Zen of Data Modeling

by Kurt Cagle

Editor Note: This was originally from May 28, 2010

 I've been rather conspicuous of late in the absence from my own site. I can cite moving cross country, starting a new job with a contractor working with a major US archival agency, house hunting, and the stresses related from all of these in that absence, but as things slowly begin to settle down here, I'm hoping to get back to writing regularly for XMLToday.org and elsewhere.

Shortly after starting (within an hour of arriving at my new workplace, in fact), I was handed a dozen or so schemas, generated from UML documents, that were being used to drive an application for the client, and told that my job was to manage them. Over the course of the last two months, this task has turned into a fairly deep, soul searching experience about what exactly we mean by data modeling, and has left scars that will likely take years to heal.  Read more...
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Aug
17

A Tale of Two Webs

by Bill Blondeau

Editor Note: This was first publishing Nov. 23, 2009.

And no. I'm not going to start out with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". But I will tell you what kind of time it was.

It was a big damn Gold Rush.

As gold rushes tend to do, it made a mess of a lot of things; some got rich and most didn't, and those who were already wealthy figured out how to take advantage of the situation. And there's one other major thing that gold rushes do: they tend to tilt balances.  Read more...
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Aug
17

Discrete Resource: a definition in support of XRX

by Bill Blondeau

Editor Note: This was first published on Nov. 23, 2009.

Here at XML Today there is a strong and laudable push to promote XRX architecture. However, the very loosely defined REST architectural style leaves us a little short on best practice recommendations.

REST is usually presented as "Many nouns, few verbs," with the assumption that, because we know the verbs inside and out, we're going to save time and write simpler code. But really, we don't - we can't - know all of the HTTP verbs as thoroughly as we'd like.

Grappling with that particular problem yields one very basic architectural concept, the Discrete Resource. The characteristics of the Discrete Resource follow pretty naturally from consideration of the HTTP methods GET, PUT, and DELETE.  Read more...
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Aug
17

Thoughts about XQuery at client-side

by Alain Couthures

Enthusiatic people about XQuery are numerous and I remember XML Prague 2010 as mainly about XQuery. I also often read that XQuery is much easier for beginners than XSLT.

Nevertheless, there is still no XQuery cross-implementation for browsers without plug-in. This was a problem for XForms too, until products such as XSLTForms or Ubiquity XForms appeared. The no-plugin constraint implies to use what is natively implemented in browsers: Javascript, of course, but also XSLT 1.0 as proved by XSLTForms.

A first step is to consider XQuery for rendering: XQuery is, surely, very good to generate well-formed HTML from XML data.  Read more...
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Aug
17

IT’s Effects on the Evolution of the Job Market

by Kurt Cagle

Editor Note: This was first published on May 31, 2010.

Some time ago I tweeted on the observation that Information Technologies tend to be destructive to jobs overall, and was rather surprised at the number of responses I received to that comment. As I've found that trying to argue a thesis that broad over Twitter can be an exercise in Haiku minimalism, the post came into being to explain a bit more my thinking here, and to suggest that IT's influences are THE primary engine driving the nature of work in the 21st century.  Read more...
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