Advanced Database Topics

Copyright Ellis Cohen 2002-2005

Querying XML with XPath and XQuery

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Topics
XPath 1.0 Predicates XPath Nodes & Axes XPath 2.0 XQuery Element Construction with XQuery

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XPath 1.0

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XPath: The XML Path Language

Used to select nodes of the document matching given criteria Identifies parts of an XML documents used in XML Schema, XPointer, XSLT and XQuery Data Types: strings, numbers, booleans and node-sets (with support for basic operations & functions) Compact, non-XML syntax similar to OS paths (uses / to walk hierarchy)
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XML Element Nodes

<CourseBooks> <Course>CS779</Course> <Book> <Title>Database Design, Implementation & Management, 5th Edition</Title> <Author>Rob & Coronel</Author> <Publisher>Course Technology</Publisher> root </Book> <Book> <Title>Professional XML Databases</Title> CourseBooks <Author>Williams</Author> <Publisher>Wrox Press</Publisher> </Book> </CourseBooks> Course Book Book This XML schema will be used for examples, with other elements & attributes added as needed
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Title Author Publisher

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Hierarchy Navigation
XPath uses / to navigate down the tree Selects a nodeset a set of nodes, not just a single node Absolute Navigation
Start XPath expression with / Starts at root of document

Relative Navigation
Doesn't start with / Starts at the context (i.e. current node)
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Simple Navigation
/CourseBooks
The coursebooks element(s) of the root

/CourseBooks/Book
All the book element children of the coursebooks child of the root

/CourseBooks/Book/Author
All the authors of all the books

Author
All the author children of the context node

./Author
Same, since . means the context node

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Navigation to Descendants
//Author
All author descendents of the root

.//Author
All author descendents of the context node

//Author/Name
The names (i.e. child name elements) of all the authors

/CourseBooks//Author
All author descendents of coursebooks

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XPath 1.0 Result

Query: //author Result is a sequence of nodes in document order
root

CourseBooks

Course

Book

Book

"CS779"

Author

Author

"Rob & Coronel"

"Williams"

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Text Fragments & Node Sets

You can imagine that the result of the query is a set of XML text fragments: <Author>Rob & Coronel</Author>, <Author>Williams</Author> but that's just a convenient way of visualizing the result. The result is the actual set of nodes

Author

Author

"Rob & Coronel"

"Williams"

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Selecting All Elements

/CourseBooks/*
All elements which are childen of coursebooks (e.g. the course and the 2 book elements)

//Author/*
All child elements of all the authors

//Book//*
All descendent elements of all the books

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Predicates

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Positional Predicates
//Book/Author[1]
1st author of each book

//Book/Author[3]/Address[1]
First address of the 3rd author of each book (ignores books that don't have 3 authors)

(//Book/Author)[1]
The 1st of all the book authors

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Descendent Positional Predicates

//Author[1]
1st author of each book (assuming authors are only children of books; more generally, the first author in each node that contains an author)

(//Author)[1]
The 1st of all the authors

(//Author)[3]/Address[1]
The 1st address of the 3rd author

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Comparative Predicates
//Author[Lastname="Cohen"] //Author[./Lastname="Cohen"]
Authors whose lastname is Cohen Note: Lastname is evaluated in the context of each author Note: Lastname is a node; by comparing it to a string, automatically use its string-value (for simple elements, its contents)

//Book[Author/Lastname="Cohen"]
Books with an author whose lastname is Cohen

//Book[.//Lastname="Cohen"]
Same, if lastnames are only children of authors

//Book/Author[starts-with(Lastname,"C")]
Book authors whose lastname starts with C
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Comparison Problem
What's the difference between
//Book/Author[Lastname = "Cohen"]

and
//Book[Author/Lastname = "Cohen"]/Author

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Comparison Answer
//Book/Author[Lastname = "Cohen"] -- Book authors whose last name is Cohen //Book[Author/Lastname = "Cohen"] -- Books who have an author whose last name is Cohen //Book[Author/Lastname = "Cohen"]/Author -- Authors of Books who have an author whose last name is Cohen If a book has two authors, Kelly and Cohen, then the first expression will just include the Author node for Cohen, while the second expression will include the author nodes for both Kelly and Cohen
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Parent Traversal & Duplicates

//Author[Lastname="Cohen"]
authors whose lastname is Cohen books with an author whose lastname is Cohen (assuming that authors only appear as children of books) Note: Suppose a book has two authors whose lastnames are both Cohen. The parent book node will only be included once. XPath 1.0 expressions automatically eliminate duplicate nodes.
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//Author[Lastname="Cohen"]/..

Function-Based Predicates
//Book/Author[2] //Book/Author[position()=2]
The second author of each book

//Book/Author[last()] //Book/Author[position()=last()]
The last author of each book

//Book/Author[position()<3]
The first 2 authors of each book
(//book/author[1..2] or //book/author[(1,2)] are not legal!)

//Book[count(Author)>2]
Books with 3 or more authors

//Book[count(Author)>2]/Author
The authors of those books
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Aggregate Functions
count(//Book[.//Lastname="Cohen"])
# of books authored by Cohen

//Book[Price > avg(//Book/Price)]

Books whose price is greater than the average book price

//Book[Price = min(//Book/Price)]
Books whose price is equal to the minimum book price What is //Book[Price > avg(//Book/Price)]/Price

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Average Problem Solution

What is //Book[Price > avg(//Book/Price)]/Price The prices of all the books whose price is above average

What query would find all books that have more than one author named Cohen? Hint: The answer is of the form: //Book[ count( something ) > 1 ]
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Count Problem Solutions

What query would find all books that have more than one author named Cohen? //Book[ count(Author[Lastname = "Cohen"]) > 1 ] Note that the following does not work //Book[ count(Author/Lastname = "Cohen") > 1 ] since Author/Lastname = "Cohen" is a boolean expression, and count operates on a nodeset.

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Unions and Boolean Operators

//Book[(count(Author)>2) or (Price>50)] //Book[count(Author)>2] | //Book[Price>50]
Books that have more than 2 authors or that cost more than $50

//Book[Price>50]/Author | //Book/Author[count(Address)>1]
Authors of books whose price is more than $50 or who have more than one address

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Intersection & Difference

//Book[(count(Author)>2) and (Price>50)] //Book[count(Author)>2] intersect //Book[Price>50] Books that have more than 2 authors and that cost more than $50 //Book[(count(Author)>2) and not (Price>50)] //Book[count(Author)>2] except //Book[Price>50] Books that have more than 2 authors and that do not cost more than $50 intersect & except added in XPath 2.0
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Multiple Predicates
//Book[(count(Author)>2) and (Price>50)] //Book[count(Author)>2][Price>50] Books that have more than 2 authors and that cost more than $50 //Book[Price > 50][position() < 11] (//Book[Price > 50])[position() < 11] The first 10 books that cost more than $50

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General Comparison of Sets and Values

When comparing a set of values (or nodes with values) to a single value, the comparison only needs to be satisfied for a single element of the set

//Book[Author/Lastname="Cohen"]
Books with some author whose lastname is Cohen

//Book[Author/Lastname!="Cohen"]
Books with some author whose lastname is not Cohen

//Book[not(Author/Lastname="Cohen")]
Books that do not have some author whose lastname is Cohen What is //Book[not(Author/Lastname!="Cohen")]
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Every Author
//Book[not(Author/Lastname!="Cohen")]
Books that do not have some author whose lastname is not Cohen That is: Books whose authors' lastnames are all Cohen

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Comparing Sets and Sets

//Book[Author/Lastname=("Cohen","Jones")]
book who have some author whose lastname is either Cohen or Jones

//Book[Author/Lastname!=("Cohen","Jones")]
book who have some author whose lastname is neither Cohen nor Jones

What do you think the meaning of this is: //Book[Publisher!="WroxPress"] [Author/Lastname= //Book[Publisher="WroxPress"]/Author/Lastname]

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Comparing Sets Problem

//Book[Publisher="WroxPress"]
books published by Wrox Press lastnames of authors of books published by Wrox Press

//Book[Publisher="WroxPress"]/Author/Lastname //Book[Publisher!="WroxPress"] [Author/Lastname=("Cohen","Jones")]

books not published by Wrox Press who have an author whose lastname is either Cohen or Jones

//Book[Publisher!="WroxPress"] [Author/Lastname= //Book[Publisher="WroxPress"]/Author/Lastname]

books not published by Wrox Press who have an author whose lastname is the same as the lastname of some author of a book published by Wrox Press

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XPath 1.0 Problem

Suppose that Author is a subelement of Book, and that Author has a Name element, as well as an Authid element which uniquely identifies the author. Can you write an XPath 1.0 expression to return the names of authors who have authored more than one book

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Limitations of XPath 1.0

Can you write an XPath 1.0 expression to return the authors who have authored more than one book You'd like to write something like //Author[ count( //Book[Author/Authid=$./Authid] ) > 1]/Name That is, you'd like $. to mean the Author nodes we are currently examining, and which we want to include in the result if the # of books by that author is > 1. But, alas, there is no $. syntax, and . would refer to the inner book being examined, not the author, so this can't be written in XPath 1.0; we'll see how to do this using XPath 2.0
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XPath Nodes & Axes

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Attributes
//Book[@isbn]
All books with an isbn attribute

//Book[Author/@status="deceased"]
All books with a deceased author

//Book[@*]
All books that have some attribute

//Book[not(@*)]
All books that have no attributes

//Book/@id
The id attributes of all books. WHOA! Those aren't element nodes!
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XPath Node Types

1. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Root node Element node Attribute node Text node Processing instruction node Comment node Namespace node
Every element node has child nodes for ALL active namespaces

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Attribute Nodes
//Book/@isbn
The isbn attribute nodes of all the books

//Book/@*
All attributes of all books

//id()
All ID-type attribute nodes

//id("here")
The ID-type attribute node named "here"

//Book[id("curbook")]
The book with an ID of "curbook"
What is the result of //Book[starts-with(.//@authid, "fr_")]
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Attribute Solution
What is the result of //Book[starts-with(.//@authid, "fr_")] Well, assuming that authors have an authid attribute, and that authid attributes start with a prefix which indicates the author's nationality ("fr_" meaning French), This identifies all books with a French author.

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Text Nodes
Book

Title

Description

"XML Stuff"

"It's "

em

" cool"

Text Node

"way"

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Text Node Queries

(//Book)[1]/Title
Might correspond to the element node: <Title>XML Stuff</Title>

(//Book)[1]/Title/text()
Would correspond to the text node containng: "XML Stuff"

(//Book)[1]/Description
Might correspond to the element node <Description> It's <em>way</em> cool </Description>

(//Book)[1]/Description/node()
This returns a set of the 3 child nodes: a text node, an element node, and another text node

(//Book)[1]/Description/*
Would correspond to the one child element node: <em>way</em>

(//Book)[1]/Description/text()
Would correspond to the two text nodes for "It's " and " cool"

What about (//Book)[1]/Description//text()

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Text Descendents vs Children

Description "It's " " cool" em

"way"

(//Book)[1]/Description/text() Would correspond to the two child text nodes for "It's " and " cool" (//Book)[1]/Description//text() Would correspond to the three descendent text nodes for "It's ", "way" and " cool"
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XPath Navigation Axes

precedingsibling ancestor

followingsibling self

child

preceding

attribute namespace

following

descendant

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XPath Navigation Axes

child (default) self (abbreviate using .) parent (abbreviate using ..) attribute (abbreviate using @) descendent-or-self (abbreviate using //) descendent ancestor-or-self ancestor preceding preceding-sibling following following-sibling namespace

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Using XPath Navigation Axes

//book/author/@status /descendent-or-self::book /child::author/attribute::status //description/text() /descendent-or-self::description /child::text()

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Uses of XPath
To specify queries To specify which set of elements need to have unique values, be keys, or contain keyrefs for XML Schema To identify sets of nodes to be formatted or transformed by XSLT To identify the parts of documents to be hyperlinked using XPointer

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XML Key Reference Example

root BookDB

Authlist

Booklist

Author

Book

name

address

dob

authid

Authref

title

publisher

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XSchema Key and Keyref Example

Every author's authid is unique and non-nil <xs:key name="authkeys"> <xs:selector xpath="//Author"/> <xs:field xpath="@authid"/> </xs:key> Each book's Authref refers to a legal authid <xs:keyref name="authrefs" refer="authkeys"> <xs:selector xpath="//Book"/> <xs:field xpath="Authref"/> </xs:keyref> The contents of a book's authref attribute must correspond to some author's authid attribute
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Cross Referencing
In BookDB, Find the title of books whose author is Williams
//Book[@authref = //Author[@name="Williams"]/@authid] /@title

Find the names of authors of books published by Wrox Press

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Cross Referencing Solution

Find the names of authors of books published by Wrox Press
//Author[@authid = //Book[@publisher="Wrox Press"]/@authref] /@name

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Early OPath
Filters Employee[empno = 3417] Employee[job = 'ANALYST']
The employee whose empno is 3417 The employees who are analysts

"Collecting" Navigation Employee[dept.dname = 'RESEARCH'] Dept[dname = 'RESEARCH'].empls Employee[job = 'CLERK'].dept Dept[empls.job = 'CLERK']
Departments that have clerks Employees in the research department

Initial versions of OPath (Microsoft's language for querying in object models) used the same syntax as XPath. The next iteration replaced the "/" (standard in the web-based world) with "." (standard in the OO world). OPath has since evolved farther from XPath.
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XPath 2.0

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XPath 2.0 Queries

Extend XPath 1.0 queries by Adding "for return " syntax Additional conditional and quantified expressions Adding more functions and operators XPath 2.0 is designed to be a common subset of two fullfledged XML query languages: XQuery & XSLT
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XPath 2.0 Type Model

XPath 1.0
Boolean, Number, String Nodeset

no duplicates traversed in forward or backward document order

XPath 2.0

All primitive XML Schema Datatypes Sequences of nodes and/or primitive values

Ordered (not always document order), allow duplicates (use distinct-values/distinct-nodes fns). XPath 1.0 expressions always in document order with duplicates removed Flattened (no sequences of sequences, though a node can represent an arbitrary hierarchy) No difference between a single node/value and a singleton sequence
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Iteration
XPath 1.0 Expressions

for $x in //Book return $x/Price

returns a sequence of the price nodes equivalent to //Book/Price

( <Price>32.95</Price>, <Price>18.25</Price>, )

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Obtaining Values
for $x in //Book return $x/Price/text()
returns a sequence of the prices as text equivalent to //Book/Price/text()

for $x in //Book return number($x/Price)

returns a sequence of the actual price values

( 32.95, 18.25, )
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Conditional Expressions
for $x in //Book return if (count($x/Author) > 2) then $x/Price * .5 else $x/Price Note the resulting sequence has both price nodes and numbers
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XPath 1.0 vs XPath 2.0

Suppose that Author is a subelement of Book, and that Author has a Name element, as well as an authid attribute which uniquely identifies the author. Can you write an XPath 2.0 expression to return the names of authors who have authored more than one book Hint: Try for $a in //Author return if (count( something ) > 1) then $a/Name else ()
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XPath 2.0 Solution

Return the names of authors who have authored more than one book
for $a in //Author return if (count( //Book[Author/@authid=$a/@authid]) > 1) then $a/name else ()

Note: () denotes the empty sequence The final result is the concatenation of the sequences returned for each iteration of the for loop. Concatenating the empty sequence has no effect
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Quantified Expressions
//Book[some $a in Author satisfies starts-with($a/Lastname,"C")]
Books with some author whose lastname starts with C

//Book[some $a in Author satisfies $a/Lastname="Cohen"]

Books with some author whose lastname is Cohen

//Book[every $a in Author satisfies $a/Lastname="Cohen"]

Books all of whose authors' lastnames are Cohen Get the names of authors, all of whose books are published by Wrox Press
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Quantified Problem Solution

for $a in //Author return if (every $b in //Book[Author/Name = $a/Name] satisfies $/Publisher = "WroxPress") then $a/Name else ()

Note: This will include authors who are not authors of any books. How could this be fixed?

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Duplicate Nodes in XPath 2.0

//Author[Lastname="Cohen"]/..
books with an author whose lastname is Cohen (assuming that authors only appear as children of books). A book that has two authors whose lastnames are both Cohen will appear once since XPath 1.0 expressions automatically eliminate duplicate nodes.

for $a in //Author[Lastname="Cohen"] return $a/..

books with an author whose lastname is Cohen (assuming that authors only appear as children of books). A book that has two authors whose lastnames are both Cohen will appear twice. Duplicate nodes are only eliminated automatically in XPath 1.0 expressions.

distinct-nodes( for $a in //Author[Lastname="Cohen"] return $a/..)

Explicitly eliminate duplicate nodes
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XQuery

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FLWOR Expressions
for let where
Optional Any number of these (at least one) in any order

order by result
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Required

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Variable Binding
for $x in //Book let $p := $x/Price return number($p)
( 32.95, 18.25, ) Let is a binding operator. There is no assignment operator.
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Where Clause
for $x in //Book let $p := $x/Price where $p > 5.00 return $p equivalent to //Book[Price > 5.00]/Price

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XQuery Problem
Suppose that Author is a subelement of Book, and that Author has a Name element, as well as an authid attribute which uniquely identifies the author. What's the clearest XQuery expression which returns the string values of the names of authors who have authored more than one book

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XQuery Solution
What's the clearest XQuery expression which returns the string values of the names of authors who have authored more than one book for $a in //Author let $abooks = //Book[Author/@authid=$a/@authid] where count($abook) > 1 return string($a/Name)

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Ordering
for $b in //Book[Price > 100] order by $b/Author[1]/Name, $b/Price descending return string($b/Title) Return a set of the string values of the titles of all the books whose price is greater than $100 Order them First, by the name of the first author Secondly, by price, highest price first
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User-Defined Functions
declare function depth($e as node) as xs:integer {

if (empty($e/*)) then 1 else max( for $c in $e/* return depth($c)) + 1

}
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XQueryX
The XQuery syntax is not XML-Based XQueryX has the same semantics as XQuery, but it is XML-Based. Too large & ugly to include See http://w3.org/TR/xqueryx

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Element Construction with XQuery

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Element Construction
<somenum>20</somenum> <somenum>20</somenum>
This doesn't generate text It generates a somenum element

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Expression Substitution
let $s := 20 return <Somenum>$s</Somenum> <Somenum>$s</Somenum> let $s := 20 return <Somenum>{ $s }</Somenum> <Somenum>20</Somenum>

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Dynamic Element Creation

let $s := 20 return element Somenum {$s } <Somenum>20</Somenum> let $tag := "Somenum", $s := 20 Return element { $tag } { $s }

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Elements with Nodes

<Naming> { (//Author/Name)[1] } </Naming> <Naming> <Name>John Doe</Name> </Naming>
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Concatenating Nested Sequences

<Names> { //Author/Name[starts-with(.,"John")] } </Names> <Names> <Name>John Doe</Name> <Name>John Bigboutay</Name> <Name>John Doe</Name> <Name>John YaYa</Name> </Names>
Note that XPath 1.0 expressions eliminate duplicated nodes, but not nodes with duplicated values
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Nested Substitution
<Result> { for $j in (3, 1, 2) return <Val>{ $j }</Val> } </Result> <Result> <Val>3</Val> <Val>1</Val> <Val>2</Val> </Result>
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Eliminating Duplicate Values

<Names> { for $nm in distinct-values( //Author/Name[starts-with(.,"John")] ) return <Name>{ $nm } </Name> } </Names> <Names> <Name>John Doe</Name> <Name>John Bigboutay</Name> <Name>John YaYa</Name> </Names>
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Calculated Selection
<Names> { let $nms := distinct-values( //Author/Name[starts-with(.,"John")] ) for $j in (3, 1, 3) return <Name>{ $nms[$j] }</Name> } </Names> <Names> <Name>John YaYa</Name> <Name>John Doe</Name> <Name>John YaYa</Name> </Names>
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Joins & Child Transfer

<Books-with-Reviews> { let $bks = doc(www.mybooks.com/books.xml), $revs = doc(www.bookreview.com/reviews.xml) for $b in $bks//Book let $isbn = $b/@isbn where some $r in $revs//BookReview satisfies $r/@isbn = $isbn return <Book> { $b/@* } { $b/* } { for $r in $revs//Bookreview[@isbn=$isbn] return <Review>{ $r/node() }</Review> } </Book> } </Books-with-Reviews>

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