Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1 Introduction to XQuery 1 This chapter provides background on the purpose and capabilities of XQuery. It also gives a quick introduction to the features of XQuery that are covered in more detail later in the book. It is designed to provide a basic familiarity with the most com- monly used kinds of expressions, without getting too bogged down in the details. What Is XQuery? The use of XML has exploded in recent years. An enormous amount of information is now stored in XML, both in XML databases and in documents on a filesystem. This includes highly structured data, such as sales figures, semistructured data such as product catalogs and yellow pages, and relatively unstructured data such as let- ters and books. Even more information is passed between systems as transitory XML documents. All of this data is used for a variety of purposes. For example, sales
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