Hi,
so many recipients. Tempting to add even more.
Too bad it was not discussed on these lists when XQuery 3.1 was still a
draft.
I think the array constructor was the biggest mistake. (I believe
arrays more frequently used than null)
I doubt it would be possible to make a worse definition.
Three constructors, map { ... }, array { ... }, [ ... ]
Only [ ... ] looks out of place.
Every other constructor in XQuery uses { }. Even node constructors.
There is no reason to add [ .. ] for arrays, if you want to make a
consistent language.
Especially adding [ ... ] but then not a raw { ... } for objects.
Anyways, assume someone really wants to have an abbreviation, because
they like JSON or JSONiq.
How would you define the semantics of the constructors?
Use comma to separate members or as XQuery comma operator concatenating
sequences?
What does it do in JSON?
There are no sequences
What does it do in JSONiq's [ ... ]?
It does concatenate sequences.
What does the other new constructor similar to array { } do ? map { 1 :
(2,3), 4: (5,6) }
There , does not concatenate sequences.
So the only reasonable definition is to concat sequences in [ ] and not
concatenate them in array { }
But no, you do the complete opposite!
Conclusion: The [ .. ] constructor was just put there to annoy JSONiq
users. That is the only explanation.
So an usual query that creates arrays cannot be a valid JSONiq and
XQuery 3.1 query at the same time.
Best,
Benito
On 05/09/2015 08:44 PM, daniela florescu wrote:
BTW,
not only I don’t think that XQuery 3.1 didn’t bring any major technical
advantage compared to JSONiq, I think some of the choices are simply
damn WRONG, and with long term negative consequences.
I can write a long email about that, but I don’t have time, and honestly, now I
care more about Augmented Reality and 3D graphics
then I care about XML and JSON.
I will mention only the biggest mistake I see: the modeling of the JSON NULL
value as an empty sequence.
Do you really think we were silly in the design of JSONiq when we made it a
separate value, different from all other values !? No, we did it on purpose,
and with avery clear goal : to be able to control it’s semantics.
If you map the JSON NULL into the empty sequence, then the NULL will
automatically behave in all operations (comparisons, arithmetics, etc)
as the empty sequence does in XQuery.
Unfortunately the semantics that XQuery has for the empty sequence is
***different*** from the semantics of NULL in the NATIVE language of JSON:
Javascript.
Right there, by this “small” decision, you made XQuery 3.1 unusable, hated, and
unused in the Javascript community, and you made the XML
community to NOT be able to work together with the JSON community.
Great achievement, lots of thinking…..W3C people ….. (it’s ironic..)
Dana
On May 9, 2015, at 11:31 AM, daniela florescu <[email protected]> wrote:
Michael,
I think I didn’t make myself clear.
The purpose of a standard is to increase interoperability in the world.
The decisions that were taken in the case of XQuery 3.1 do exactly the
opposite, WITHOUT bringing in any major technical
advantages.
That’s all I am trying to say.
JSONiq is 3 years old, implemented by a variety of systems, and used in
production in many places. And it was very well
designed: 2 years of VERY CAREFUL design by very good engineers went into the
design of JSONiq.
Plus JSONiq will CONTINUE to be used widely in the NOSQL community, simply for
the following two reasons:
(a) it has a JSON-only subset that makes sense for the JSON-only community (who
in general doesn’t want to see any shadow of angle brackets) and
(b) has the great advantage that doesn’t have the hated word “Xquery” in its
name.
By not following JSONiq, by taking “slightly different” choices, or by not
trying to extend it, XQuery 3.1 just broke the interoperability
in the NOSQL community, and this is what I consider a total lack of vision from
the “leaders” of this community.
Let’s look again of the differences you mentioned between JSONiq and XQuery
3.1. I quote:
***********************************************
At the data model level:
* Maps can use any atomic value as the key, it does not have to be a string
* The members of an array are sequences, not necessarily items
* JSON’s null is represented as an empty sequence, not as a new atomic data type
At the syntax level:
* In XQ3.1, Map constructors use the syntax map{ a:b, c:d } rather than bare
curlies
* XQ 3.1 introduces a lookup operator for maps and arrays: employee?name, or
book?author?1
**********************************************
Now, dear Michael, ask yourself the following questions:
*********************************************
1. Was there any “mistake”, or “bug”, that was in JSONiq that those choices
solved ?
I am not aware of any.
2. Are any of those choices “fundamental’, aka introduce a much larger
expressive power, make the language much easier to use, etc.?
Anything fundamental in those “new” choices ?
Nope, they are just small, mostly insignificant, just enough itsy bitsy
differences to confuse and irritate the entire NoSQL community.
3. In case where a larger expressive power was desired, wasn’t it better to
extend JSONiq in an upper compatible way, rather to take a different route ?
4. Did XQuery 3.1 “committee” ever tried to contact the JSONiq community to try
to find common solution that would eventual lead to a single, better language ?
ALL decisions we took in the design of JSONiq were definitely not random, but
VERY carefully thought out. You were not even curious of what those reason
where,
(and sometimes XQuery 3.1 got it totally wrong — I an write you a long email
about THAT).
*********************************************
So: no bugs to be fixed, no new major technical advantages, and no desire to
cooperate.
What conclusion do you get from here ?
I get a single conclusion: the XQuery 3.1 committee has a total lack of vision
and leadership in the NoSQL world.
This can has two possible explanations: pure stupidity and lack of good will.
I am trying to be nice, and pick the second choice among those two…..you see.
No wonder that because of silly decisions like this they will make XQuery to
become irrelevant in the NoSQL world. No wonder the Cassandras, the Mongos
and the BigTable and all other JSON databases of the world will ignore what you
“decided”, deal Michael Kay and other W3C people.
And that’s a pity because XQuery could have contributed quite a bit to the
NoSQL world. XQuery has an experience of 16 years of processing semi-structured
data that those guys have no clue about (most they don’t even understand what
they don’t know).
You made a HUGE political mistake in the design of XQuery 3.1. by fractioning
the community.
And this: for no technical gain AT ALL.
The community looses, and I can see only two “people” who beneficiate (only
short term) from this schism: Saxon and MarkLogic.
Long term everyone looses from those stupid decisions.
Dana
On May 8, 2015, at 4:09 AM, Michael Kay <[email protected]> wrote:
So, to me, the decisions of the W3C working group seems random, and rather
based on a two years old
kind of a tantrum “I WANT TO BE DIFFERETENT JUST BECAUSE…..I WANT IT."
……...rather then justified by any technical reasons.
No, all the arguments were all technical. For example:
* generalizing maps to allow any atomic type as the key, rather than only a
string, was because of specific use cases that required this (remember that the
first proposal to add maps to XDM came from XSLT streaming work, not from
JSONiq)
* the decision to use “map{…}” rather than “{…}” was to some extent subjective,
but was motivated by technical arguments such as the ability to produce good
error messages, retaining options for future extensions to the grammar, etc.
Expressions beginning with “{“ are particularly problematic because “{“ is used
to delimit embedded expressions in element content, and “{{“ is used to escape
“{“ as an ordinary character; they are also very obscure when used as the body
of a function (declare function f {{1:2}}). Before making this decision, we
looked at how many other popular languages solve this problem.
* the decision to allow any sequence to act as a member of an array enabled
things like the fn:apply() function, whose second argument is an array of
arbitrary sequences; it also enabled JSON null to be represented by an empty
sequence, which avoided the need for pervasive changes to the language to
define how every function and operator should handle a JSON null. Reducing the
number of concepts by one is a definite plus.
Getting agreement on all these points was a very lengthy process with much
heated argument. Although the decisions made were not always the ones I
personally advocated, I think the final language works well. If there’s one
aspect I’m still a little unhappy about, it’s the fact that an array behaves
like a single item, so for example
let $A := [1,2,3]
return $A[1]
returns [1,2,3]
But that’s there because we tried very hard to find a way to avoid this
surprise, and failed: the sequence=item model in XDM is just too deeply
embedded.
Michael Kay
Saxonica
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