Remembering the Future

Another reason for the low publicity level of XQuery is that so far there has been little evidence that XML data storage can become the ubiquitous technology that will unseat relational data storage. Although XML databases exhibit a lot of valuable and exotic features, they can be closely compared to their object oriented counterparts in terms of market penetration. Both seem to be very convenient for solving a set of specialized problems and both seem to do well with small and mid-size systems. However, as the complexity of the storage problem increases, neither XML nor object oriented stores appears to be able to scale as well as the relational solutions. Actually, doing as well as the relational solutions will probably not cut the mustard either. Only a quantum leap in technology would move the mountain of investment away from the RDBMS legacy. ... XQuery will find its spot under the sun in a land little anticipated by its authors. We are witnessing the era of inter-company software integration. ... The logical question becomes, then, what the best way to bridge two XML interfaces is? We need a language that is convenient for writing business logic and can natively manipulate XML data. This is where XQuery shines. It is a very expressive functional language with a simple, familiar syntax and an organic connection to XML data structures.