W3C XML Query (XQuery)

Patent Disclosures

The XML Query Working Group operates under the Royalty Free terms of the W3C Patent policy. Patent disclosures relevant to the specifications produced by the XML Query working group can be found in the Implementation of the W3C Patent Policy (IPP) XML Query IPP status page and, for XSL and joint specifications the XSL WG IPP status page. Older disclosures are on the XML Query Working Group's patent disclosure page at http://www.w3.org/2002/08/xmlquery-IPR-statements.

Specifications that are joint work with the XSL working group have also the additional patent disclosures provided by the XSL wg at http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/Disclosures.

Discussion/Feedback:

Email: use member-query-feedback@w3.org to comment/suggest new content for this page, or if for some reasons you need to directly contact the W3C XQuery responsibles; otherwise, please use the mailing lists listed below
Mailing lists:

www-ql@w3.org

The public mailing list on query languages, including (but not limited to) discussion on the XML Query project. This list originated from the QL'98 w3c-ql@w3.org mailing list, and has now become a public list (see the migration announcement). Only subscribed users can post to this list. Subscription is open to everybody: to subscribe or unsubscribe just send a message to www-ql-request@w3.org with your request. The list is publicly archived at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ql/.

public-qt-comments@w3.org

Note: before posting to this mailing list, be sure to read the Status section in the document on which you are commenting. Most of our documents now ask you to send comments using bugzilla.

This public mailing list is used to submit comments on the publications of the XML Query and XSL working groups. This is not a discussion list (use www-ql@w3.org instead), and so you shouldn't subscribe: this list is just a way for people to provide their comments to the XML Query and XSL WGs, and for the WGs to reply. The list is publicly archived at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-qt-comments/.

Implementations

XML Query Implementations

If your implementation is not here, or if you know of an implementation that is not listed, send liam@w3.org the details!

Software that implements the XQuery and XPath Full Text Facility is so marked in this list. There is a separate list of XPath 2 implementations.

The W3C XPath and XQuery Grammar Test Page features Java applets that read expressions and show the resulting parse tree.
Abacus Systems' Relational XQuery supports both relational data (via JDBC) and other sources including XML files, and also claims XQJ (XQuery for Java API) conformance. Includes a GUI for creating and editing queries. 30 day evaluation.
[2011-03-25: Last update July 2009; project homepage is gone.
Altova GmbH XMLSpy 2006 includes an XQuery Debugger, a code generator for mapping between Schemas, and AltovaXML Query Processor which handles both XSLT 2 and XML Query 1.0 [30-day free trial]
Apple's Sherlock for Mac OS X; see also their XML Query Extension functions.
BEA's Oracle Data Services Platform [90-day free trial]. BEA was an active participant in the XML Query Working Group; the company was bought by Oracle, also an active participant.
Berkeley Lab's Nux, an open source Java in-memory toolkit for XML, XQuery, XPath, schema validation, fuzzy fulltext similarity search and related technologies using Saxon, XOM, Xerces and JAXB [open source under a BSD-style license]. Implements the XQuery Update Facility; Full-Text Support; latest release seems to be June 2006.
Bluestream Database Software Corp.'s XStreamDB, a native XML database server and full text support, aimed primarily at DITA. [commercial with trial download]
David Carlisle's xq2xml converts XQuery to XML, to XQueryX and to XSLT.
Cerebra Inc.'s Cerebra Server supports XQuery, OWL-DL and RDF, and can connect to external databases, but their Web server no longer responds.
Cognetic Systems's XQuantum implements XML Query 1.0 in an XML-native indexed data store. They have a Web page demonstrating the XQuery Use Cases, and support static typing and modules as well as some full-text extensions. [Windows and Linux; 30-day evaluation] Full-Text Support
DataDirect's DataDirect XQuery (tm), an embeddable component for XQuery that implements the XQuery for Java(tm) API (XQJ) [Java; 15-day trial download]. DataDirect participates in the XML Query Working Group.
DataDirect's Stylus Studio 5.0 (XQuery, XML Schema and XSLT IDE). DataDirect participates in the XML Query Working Group.
EMC's xDB; this was formerly X-Hive, and EMC also owns Documentum. Their xDB product claims to be a native XML database in Java, with full XQuery support. [commercial, free evaluation download]
eXist has a Java-based native XML database with an XQuery interface. [Open source, GNU LGPL.] Implements the XQuery Update Facility
The open source GCX, a streaming in-memory XQuery engine with static and dynamic buffer minimzation developed originally at Saarland University [open source]
MXQuery from ETH, a research project; the sourceforge page says, The Micro XQuery Engine is a low-footprint, extensible implementation of XQuery 1.0 including extensions like the XQuery Update and XQueryP. It supports streaming execution and runs on all devices support CLDC 1.0 upwards. [Open source, BSD/Apache license]. ETH is an active participant in the XML Query Working Group. Implements the XQuery Update Facility
Fatdog Software's XQEngine Java. [Open source: GPL or as negotiated]. Full-Text Support [last update 2009-07-18]
GAEL's Derby provides a Java API via their Data Request Broker. There is extensive support for data analysis, including plotting graphs and making tables.
Galax. Open-source (in OCAML), with a Galatex full text search implementation. The authors of Galax include a number of active participants in the XML Query Working Group, both psat and present. Full-Text Support
GNU's Qexo (Kawa-Query) by Per Bothner. Compiles XQuery on-the-fly to Java bytecodes. Based on and part of the Kawa framework. Qexo implements the optional XQuery static typing feature. [Open-source under the GPL-like Kawa License].
HXQ, a compiler from XQuery to Haskell; appears to be an imcomplete research project, but said to be already useful. Open source, license terms unclear from the Web page.
Ipedo's XIP includes a "dual core" SQL + XML Query engine (XMLDB).
IBM's WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for XML supports XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0, with a Java API that unifies all three languages. [Free download; requires WebSphere Application Server, which is commercial]
IBM's xqnsta: XQuery Normalizer and Static Analyzer (XQNSTA) is a Java API and GUI for normalizing and computing the static type of XQuery expressions. IBM is an active participant in the XML Query Working Group.
IBM's DB2 9 stores XML in its native format and provides support for XQuery.
IPSI's IPSI-XQ [java; free download]; this seems to have moved to sourceforge. Last update 2001-11-29.
Ispras Modis' Sedna. Native XML DBMS in C/C++ and Scheme; partial support for XML Query. Includes an Apache HTTP module, and APIs for .NET, Python and Chicken Scheme. There is also a Firefox extension, XqUSEme, and a special build of firefox, XDIB (XQuery In a Browser), for unning client-side XQuery scripts. [Open source under the Apache License].
Liquid Technologies' Liquid XML Studio features an XQuery Debugger [30-day trial for Microsoft platforms].
Apache Lux combines the Lucene/Solr search index with the Saxon XQuery/XSLT processor, adding XQuery support to Solr and adding persistence to Saxon. [Open source.]
MarkLogic's MarkLogic Server 4.0 (formerly known as Content Interaction Server). There is also a technical overview document. Commercial, with free download restricted to 100 Megaybytes of data. A limited duration trial license is also available, limited to 1G of content. Full-Text Support. Implements the XQuery Update Facility. MarkLogic is an active participant in the XML Query Working Group.
Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 Express, with XML Schema, XPath 2, and XML Query support. Later versions of SQL Server continue to support XQuery. Microsoft is an active participant in the XML Query Working Group.
CWI's MonetDB/XQuery is an XQuery system that also supports XQUF updates. It is based on the Pathfinder compiler developed at TU Munich, and aims at achieving high performance. Open Source (adapting the Mozilla Public License). Implements the XQuery Update Facility.
OpenLink Software's Virtuoso Universal Server claims to support XSLT 1.2 (?! their link points to the XSLT 1.1 draft), XQuery and SQLX.
Oracle Berkeley DB XML 2.0, formerly Sleepycat's, an embeddable native XML database with support for XQuery 1.0 (July 2004 draft), implemented in C++, with interfaces for Java, Python, Perl and PHP. Open source. Oracle is an active participant in the XML Query Working Group. Full-Text Support
Oracle'sOracle XQuery implementation is part of the Oracle Database product [multi-platform; seems to be a free binary download]. Oracle is an active participant in the XML Query Working Group.
Patternist, an XQuery 1.0, XSL-T 2.0 and XPath 2.0 implementation that provices a C++ API (open source under GPL, uses TrollTech's Qt library)
PHP XML Classes includes XqueryLite, a PHP implementation from 2002. [open source]
Politecnico di Milano's XQBE and other XQuery products
QuiLogic's SQL/XML-IMDB supports a mixure of SQL statements and XQuery expressions. [Free trial requires a restart every hour]
RainingData's TigerLogic XDMS XML Data Management Server for Sun Solaris and Microsoft Windows [free trial].
Renmin University of China's OrientX, a native XML database system in C/C++ developed under Renmin University of China. [open source]
Saarland University Database Group's FluXQuery [no longer maintained], an extension of the XQuery language, FluX, that supports event-based query processing and the conscious handling of main memory buffers. Obsoleted by GCX, but the web page is still mirrored at Cornell.
Saxonica's Saxon implements both XML Query and XSLT 2.0. Available in a schema-aware version as a commercial product, and without schema support as open source. Saxonica is an active participant in the XML Query Working Group.
Software AG's
- Tamino XML Server Full-Text Support
- Tamino XML Query Demo
Sonic Software's Sonic XML Server [30-day trial]
The Universität Konstanz's Database and Information Systems Group's BaseX (open source/GPL) Implements the XQuery Update Facility; Full-Text Support
videlibri, an open source XPath 2 implementation in Free Pascal by Benito van der Zander. Further work continues under the name Xidel (q.v.).
The Apache Software Foundation's VXQuery says, The focus is on the evaluation of queries on large amounts of XML data. Specifically the goal is to evaluate queries on large collections of relatively small XML documents. To achieve this queries will be evaluated on a cluster of shared nothing machines.
The University of Texas at Arlington Computer Science Department has people working on XQP: XQuery Processing on a P2P System. [Java; open source]
The Univerisity of Antwerp's Blixem LiXQuery engine implements a subset of XQuery intended for teaching (the download link no longer works, as of September 2009).
Worcester Polytechnic Institute's RainbowCore. [Java. available at no charge and without warranty].
XBird, a light-weight embeddable XQuery processor and database system written in Java, with a distributed XQuery processor. [open source]
Xidel by Benito van der Zander, is an open source implementation (in Pascal) of XPath 2, XQuery 1 with some XPath 3 and XQuery 3 features, JSONiq, CSS selectors and templates, with the aim of making a system to scrape Web sites easily.
XMLmind's Qizx comes in three versions: (1) an open source one (Qizx/open); (2) a commercial implementation, Qizx/db, with an indexed native XML database and full-text support, and (3) Qizx/db Free Engine, a freely downloadable version of Qizx/db but that has a database size limit of approximately one gigabyte of XML. Implements the XQuery Update Facility; Full-Text Support
Xpriori's XMS native XML database, with XPath2.0/XQuery access language support [.Net on Linux and MS Windows; free unlimited download for development purposes.]
XQuare Group and Universite' de Versailles Saint-Quentin's: XQuare Fusion and XQuare Bridge, open-source, used to be called xQuark (see also the Xquare home page)
XQIB, XQuery In the Browser, an XQuery plugin for Microsoft Internet Explorer [open source]
XQilla, C++ implementation based on pathan and Xerces-C. Open source (BSD/Sleepycat license). Sleepycat (Oracle) is an active participant in the XML Query Working Group.
XQSharp, XQuery for the .NET framework, from CBCL. Includes Schema support and static typing. XQSharp was previously known as Anglo. [commercial; free for non-commercial use] CBCL is an active participant in the XML Query Working Group.
Xyleme's Xyleme LCMS [commercial]
Zorba, an open source portable embeddable C++ implementation of XQuery. There are also PHP, Python and Ruby APIs. [open source, Apache licence]

Unconfirmed Implementations

Please send liam@w3.org any information about these; I have tried to contact people where possible.

Actuate's Actuate 8 incorporates Nimble's XQuery implementation. The Summary of New Features requires a registration (!) so I cannot be sure if this still implements XML Query.
ACL's Blackpearl 4 platform, supposedly with an embedded XQuery engine but this is not mentioned on their Web site as far as I can tell. The rights to Blackpearl were bought by ACL, who also do not seem to talk about XML Query.
AGiLiENCE's XPeerion; AGiLiENCE is a spin-off from Siemens AG. The Web page seems not to mention XML Query.
ATS' BizQuery [30-day free trial; no product link]
Axyana Software's Qizx/Open is now marketed by XMLmind; [Java, open source under the Mozilla Public License]. Full-Text Support
The Mono Project implements a draft of XML Query, although this may not be active. [open source]
Xenos purchesed XML Global in 2003, and it is not clear from their Web page whether they still have XQuery support.
XQuench has not released any files since 2001 and is probably defunct.

XPath 2 Implementations

Software that implements XPath 2.0, but not XML Query or XSLT 2

AquaPath by Todd Ditchendorf is a free Cocoa-based developer tool for Mac OS X Tiger that allows you to evaluate XPath 2.0 expressions against any XML document and view the result sequence in a dynamic tree representation.
The Mono Project implements a draft of XPath 2.0 and XQuery. [open source]
NSXML from Apple Computers includes support for XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0; it is part of Cocoa.
Pathan from Decision Soft [open source, uses Xerces-C]
PathEnq from Philip Fearon (an online service) can handle XML/HTML and also HTML 5. It uses Saxon-CE running in the browser. Source code on github.
PsychoPath is an open source XML Schema Aware XPath 2.0 Processor written in Java under the EPL license, as part of the Eclipse XSLT Project.
Saxon can also be used as a standalone XPath 2 engine, both on Java and .NET [open source]
Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 Express, has XML Schema, XPath 2 and XML Query support. [commercial]
Virtual XML Garden from IBM has XPath 2.0 support and also supports some of XQuery. [commercial; source available]
Altova GmbH XMLSpy includes an XQuery Debugger, a code generator for mapping between Schemas, and AltovaXML Query Processor which handles both XSLT 2 and XML Query 1.0 [30-day free trial]

Publications

Books

I have tried to indicate where authors participated in the XML Query Working Group, sent comments on the specifications, or have written implementations themselves. This does not necessarily make them good writers, but it may help you to understand their point of view and their connection with XML Query.

Books that I have received more recently are at the top of the list.

An XQuery Wikibook by Chris Wallace, Dan Mcreary and Kurt Cagle
Querying XML : XQuery, XPath, and SQL/XML in context by Jim Melton and Stephen Buxton; The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems, 2006. The book also has its own Querying XML Web page. [Both authors have participated heavily in the development of XML Query; Jim Melton is currently the co-chair of the W3C XML Query Working Group. - Liam]
XQuery: The XML Query Language by Michael Brundage; Addison-Wesley Professional, February 2004. With a foreword by Michael Rys. Book web site at www.qbrundage.com/xquery/. [The first half of the book is an introduction to XQuery, including an interesting chapter on Idioms. The second half is a reference. - Liam]
XQuery from the Experts edited by Howard Katz, with chapters by Don Chamberlin, Denise Draper, Mary Fernandez, Michael Kay, Jonathan Robie, Michael Rys, Jerome Simeon, Jim Tivy and Philip Wadler. Addison-Wesley Professional, September 2003. There are two chapters online at www.fatdog.com. [Although this book is older, the text is a very happy mix of tutorials, design rationale and examples. The authors have been heavily involved in the design of XML Query, and most have been active memebers of the W3C XML Query Working Group; the editor, Howard Katz, has also made his own open-source implementation. - Liam]

I have not seen the following books:

XQuery by Priscilla Walmsley. O'Reilly; expected late 2006. The first half is available through their "Rough Cuts" program (at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/xquery/) and at Priscilla's information page at http://www.datypic.com/books/xquery. [I have not seen this book. Priscilla made many helpful comments on the specifications - Liam]
XQuery Kick Start by James McGovern, Per Bothner, Kurt Cagle, James Linn and Vaidyanathan Nagarajan; Sams, September 2003. [I have not seen this book. Per Bothner made many helpful public comments on the specifications - Liam]
Early Adopter XQuery by Dan Maharry, Rogerio Saran, Kurt Cagle, Mark Fussell and Nalleli Lopez. Wrox Press; January, 2002. [This book was probably too early to be of use today, although I have not seen it to be sure. I am listing it for completeness. Michael Brundage has written that it is out of date, but that it reviewed some XQuery APIs - Liam]
Querying XML with XQuery (Advances in Database Systems) by Yannis Papakonstantinou and Ioana Manolescu. Springer; March 2006 [forthcoming, I assume. Ioana participates in the XML Query Working Group. - Liam]
XQuery - Grundlagen und fortgeschrittene Methoden by Wolfgang Lehner. dpunkt.verlag, January 2004; this book is downloadable from Amazon for US$30.

Tutorials

A Google search for "(XQuery tutorial"|"XML Query tutorial") produced over 150 matches (Google actually said about 30,500 but this turned out to mean exactly 153).

Other Pointers

To suggest a new pointer, send an email to member-query-feedback@w3.org.

IBM Systems Journal Vol 45, No. 2, 2006 - Celebrating 10 Years of XML has a number of articles on or relating to XML Query.
Choosing Between XSLT 2.0 and XML Query 1.0 by Mike Kay (Saxonica), a talk given at the WWW 2006 conference in May 2006.
An XML based architecture for Web 2.0 applications by Daniela Florescu (Oracle Corp.), a talk given at the WWW 2006 conference in May 2006.
Jonathan Bruce's blog covering XQuery topics from the perspective of .NET and Java developers, including some XQJ coverage.
Jonathan Robie's XQuery Blog
Oxygen XML's <oXygen/> editor includes an XQuery debugger that relies on Saxon. The editor is in Java and runs on Linux and Unix as well as on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.
A brief article, XQuery 1.0 is Nearing Completion by Andrew Eisenberg and Jim Melton, ACM SIGMOD Record, Vol. 34, No. 4, December 2005.
Blooming FLWOR - An Introduction to the XQuery FLWOR Expression, a tutorial by Dr. Michael Kay, the sequel to Learn XQuery in 10 Minutes (see next item).
Learn XQuery In 10 Minutes by Dr. Michael H. Kay
Introduction to XQuery, a tutorial by Priscilla Walmsley (updated to align with June 2006 CR documents)
Essential XQuery - The XML Query Language, tutorial, 2004.
A Light but Formal Introduction to XQuery, research/educational article, Dec 2004.
Using XQuery in ASP.NET article/tutorial by Pieter Siegers, Aug 2004.
XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference book by Wrox, Aug 2004.
XQuery: The XML Query Language, book by Addison-Wesley, Feb 2004
Learn XQuery and ASP.NET Tutorial, Jan 2004.
XQuery Implementation, Oct 2003.
XQuery: A Guided Tour, Sep 2003.
XQuery from the Experts: A Guide to the W3C XML Query Language, book by Addison-Wesley, Sep 2003.
XQuery 1.0: Primer, Jul 2003.
XQuery, the Query Language of the Future, Jul 2003.
Writing and Debugging XQuery Web Apps with Qexo, Jun 2003.
Interactive Web Applications with XQuery, May 2003.
X Is for XQuery, May 2003.
Five Practical XQuery Applications, May 2003.
Processing RSS, April 2003.
XQuery Kick Start, book by Sams (2003).
An Early Look at XQuery, SIGMOD record, vol.31, n.4, 2002.
XQuery: An XML query language, tutorial overview, IBM Systems Journal 41(4), 2002.
Early Adopter XQuery, book by Wrox (2002).
A Data Model for Strongly Typed XML, December 2002.
Process XML using XML Query, tutorial, 2002.
What is Xquery?, introductory article, 2002.
Presentation on XPath and XQuery held at the 11^th International World Wide Web Conference, Hawaii, May, 2002.
What's new in XPath 2.0, introductory article, March, 2002.
Presentation on XML Query held at the 20^th Unicode Conference, Washington, January, 2002.
XQuery Formal Semantics State and Challenges, SIGMOD record, vol.30, n.3, 2001.
Presentation on XML Query held at the 10^th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW10), Hong Kong, May, 2001.
Presentation on XML Query held at the 9^th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW9), Amsterdam, May 19, 2000.
Where it all started: the Query Languages'98 (QL'98) workshop, with its unique collection of contributed works.
The XML Activity Statement also explains the W3C's work on query language,
The XML Query charter.
The XML Query Working Group page (W3C members only)

Contacting Us

To contact the XML Query and XSL Working Groups, you can send email to public-qt-comments at w3.org

To report errors in the specification please use bugzilla, as described in the Status section at the start of each specification.

To comment on this page, send mail to liam at w3 dot org

First created by Massimo Marchiori on April 2000.
Page redesigned in 2007 by Liam; images from www.fromoldbooks.org used by permission.
Page maintained by Liam Quin.
Current: $Revision: 1.221 $ $Date: 2017/04/22 18:49:04 $

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W3C XML Query (XQuery)

30,000 Foot View

XQuery: 30,000 foot view (CIO, CTO, Journalist)

Contents

Architects

XQuery for the systems analyst or architect

Users

XQuery: choosing an implementation

Learning

Reading the Specs

Implementers

XQuery for the implementer: hard core query

The XQuery Test Suite

Static Typing and Formal Semantics

Conformance Statements

Documents

Specifications and Working Group Notes

Recently added...

XQuery 3.0, XPath 3.0 and supporting specs now W3C Recommendations

BaseX 7.8 Released

XMLSpy 2014

Apache Lux

BaseX 7.7 Released

Zorba 2.9 released

Xidel HTML/XML data extraction tool 0.7

W3C Java Applets updated

W3C Recommendations!

Micro XQuery Engine 0.1

oXygen Editor 8.0

Unconfirmed Implementations