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:

  1. What is this standard
  2. Why is it important
  3. 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:

  1. 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;
  2. 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;
  3. What are the implementation challenges? Where do I start? Anway, here are a few:
    • Content Creation - we need to create the Infobase; for an XML based Infobase