[Bug 7933] New: Enhancement to doc() to process a set of URIs

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7933

           Summary: Enhancement to doc() to process a set of URIs
           Product: XPath / XQuery / XSLT
           Version: Working drafts
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Windows NT
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Functions and Operators 1.1
        AssignedTo: mike@...
        ReportedBy: mike@...
         QAContact: public-qt-comments@...


Message from Loren Cahlander of Syntactica sent to public-qt-comments on 13 Oct
2009


I would like to request that the specification of fn:doc() be changed to match
the implementation of that function by MarkLogic.

In MarkLogic, they deviated from the XQuery spec for the fn:doc() function and
it can return multiple documents based on a sequence of document URIs passed
into the function at one time.

http://developer.marklogic.com/pubs/4.1/apidocs/SequenceBuiltins.html#fn:doc

The eXist Open Source Database implements fn:doc() to the W3C specification and
has the function xmldb:document() that returns multiple documents

Here is the function documentation for xmldb:document() and fn:doc()

xmldb:document() can return multiple documents with a single call and fn:doc()
can only return one document at a time.

Another option would be to leave fn:doc() alone and add fn:docs() with the
multiple document URIs being passed in.

xmldb

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://exist-db.org/xquery/xmldb
A module for database manipulation functions.
document

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

xmldb:document($document-uris as xs:string+, ...) node()*
Returns the documents $document-uris in the input sequence. Collection URIs can
be specified either as a simple collection path or an XMLDB URI.If the input
sequence is empty, the function will load all documents in the database.
$document-uris The document URIs



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Returns the documents

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deprecated: See the standard fn:doc() function This function could be removed
at anytime during the 1.5 development and will be removed in the 1.6 release.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions
A module with the XQuery/XPath Core Library Functions
doc

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

doc($document-uri as xs:string?) node()?
Returns the document node of $document-uri. Resource URIs can be specified
either as a simple collection path, an XMLDB URI or any URI.
$document-uri The document URI


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Returns the document node of $document-uri




Loren Cahlander
Enterprise Architect
Syntactica


--
Configure bugmail: http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the QA contact for the bug.

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7933





--- Comment #1 from Michael Kay <mike@...>  2009-10-16 09:08:14 ---
Personal response: Generally we made a design decision that functions in the
standard function library should not do implicit mapping of sequence-valued
arguments. If doc() were to do this, then for consistency we should review the
whole function library to see what other functions should do it: for example,
root(), base-uri(), etc etc.

It seems to me that it is easy enough to write

//@href/doc(.)

to get all the documents linked from the current document, or to write

for $x in $uris return doc($x)

to process a sequence of strings.

(Personally, I would still like to see a simple mapping operator for atomic
values, so that one could write $uris%doc(..) where % is the relevant operator
- the difficulty has always been in finding a suitable operator. I would also
like to see more functions able to default the first argument to ".", including
the ability for user-defined functions to do the same.)

Concerning doc(), it is worth noting that XSLT users have access to the
document() function, which does do implicit mapping. That was one of the
features that the XQuery WG didn't like, which led to the introduction of
doc(). (Other features were the complex rules for determining a base URI). We
certainly wouldn't want to complicate life for XSLT users by giving them a
choice of three functions with different mixtures of implicit semantics.

Finally, a comment on the proposal. It makes no attempt to say why the new
functionality is needed, justifying it solely on the basis that two products
have chosen to implement (conformant or non-conformant) extensions that do
this. That in itself is not sufficient justification.


--
Configure bugmail: http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the QA contact for the bug.

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7933


Mary Holstege <holstege@...> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |holstege@...
             Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED
         Resolution|                            |WONTFIX




--- Comment #2 from Mary Holstege <holstege@...>  2009-11-05 17:52:01 ---
The WG discussed this at the F2F meeting of 2009-11-05, endorsing comment #1.
There are several ways to get the functionality, if it is desirable, including
defining your own wrapper function to do it.


--
Configure bugmail: http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the QA contact for the bug.