When industry standards emerge one of the very first things I do (instinctively) is commence a quest to understand the essence of the standard's value proposition and then unravel implementation challenges as they affect existing IT infrastructure. The quest comprises the following steps:
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What is this standard
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Why is it important
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What are the implementation challenges
When XQuery first came across my radar (late 90s even before "XQuery" became the moniker for an XML Query Language) I arrived at the following conclusions using the steps listed above:
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What is XQuery about? Its about querying XML Documents (at the time real or virtual) in a repository. Basically, its the SQL equivalent for the XML based Infobase;
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Why is it important? Because we will need to access, repurpose, and disseminate the contents of the Infobase for a myriad of reasons which ultimately culminate in knowledge creation;
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What are the implementation challenges? Where do I start? Anway, here are a few: