DataDirect Technologies has announced the availability of a beta version of DataDirect XQuery for registered participants. DataDirect XQuery is an embeddable XQuery implementation for XML applications that need to process both XML and relational data sources.

DataDirect XQuery is an implementation of the XQuery API for Java (XQJ, JSR 225), which is itself a Java specification for implementing the W3C's XQuery 1.0. It supports DB2, MS SQL Server, and Oracle databases, according to the product web site. It also has a product suite available to help developers write and learn XQuery.

Are you interested in trying it out? JSR-225 is attempting to reflect a generalized query language for XML and databases. Is that even a useful idea? Should the other JSRs that need generalized queries (such as JSR-170, the Java Content Repository) be trying to leverage such specifications themselves instead of implementing XPath and JCRQL internally?

Congratulations on getting to the Beta stage. Interesting questions you posted too. Schemas are getting complex and their resulting documents are large and complicated..So, why would you ever want to store xml in a rdms? The transformations in and out of the db will kill performance. Am I missing something?

-Frank

Most businesses store and query data using relational databases, but exchange it as XML. Most of the information in relational databases is still "shredded" into relational tables, though more and more is being stored as XML. XQuery is ideal for producing the XML that web applications need, using relational database data. It is also ideal for querying incoming XML. Transforming data from one format to another costs performance, but iin many environments, the same data is used to create a large number of different XML structures, reflecting different needs, so there is no "one true format" for a given dataset.

-Jonathan
B: http://blogs.datadirect.com/jonathan