Don,
XUpdate is in effect a dead specification. There no perfect replacement for it, but:
1. For XML databases queries, yes, XQuery 1.0 is (more precisely will be soon when it is a W3C recommendation) the answer.
2. For XML databases updates, there is no standard as of yet. It is expected that the next version of XQuery will include support for updates. Today, some databases use their own XQuery extensions (Tamino), and some use XUpdate (eXist).
3. As a pure transformation language, XSLT 2.0 can do everything XUpdate does, albeit with the XSLT approach (i.e. functional), as opposed to the XUpdate approach (an imperative language).
The answer to your last question is no: XSLT 2.0 and XQuery do not make XUpdate relevant in the case of XML databases. A standard for updates is still missing.
The reasons for XUpdate's demise are not 100% clear. There are applications where XUpdate (or an upgrade of it closer from what's now available in XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0) is a better fit than XSLT.
BTW with Presentation Server, the only place where XUpdate is required is Page Flow, where it is used to describe how values from a source XForms instance (and possibly an action) are passed to another page's XForms instance.
-Erik
Don Smith wrote:
Is it the case that the XUpdate specification is still a working draft from the year 2000? Or has the work been picked up somewhere I haven't yet found?
If the specification has not moved passed the WD state in four years, it's hard to resist the conclusion that this is a dead specification. What happened?
Does the combination of XQuery and XSLT 2.0 make XUpdate irrelevant?
Don
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