> > Sure I can do that because after all an array is a glorified dataset. But I > won’t J. > Question is: does the W3C as a standardization-organization, want its product > to settle for a workaround like that? >
The answer is yes. If we still had 40 people taking an active part in the development process, we would probably be more ambitious. But it’s down to a handful, and you have to set your work programme so it can be achieved with the resources available. Remember the work is not done by W3C as some faceless entity, it is done by individuals whose work is in some cases funded by their companies and in some cases entirely voluntary. If you want to know why they aren’t doing this work, first ask why you aren’t doing it. Adding arrays to the data model was in many ways a kludge. We would have much preferred to have done a generic collection capability where operations like FLWOR expressions applied to any kind of collection, rather than each kind of collection having its own functions and operators. But it was too hard and too disruptive, so we settled for doing it as a bolt-on. Without the underpinnings of a generic collections framework in the language, we certainly wouldn’t want to add more ad-hoc collection types. Michael Kay Saxonica
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