Skip to Content
XQuery
book

XQuery

by Priscilla Walmsley
March 2007
Intermediate to advanced
512 pages
21h 15m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from XQuery

Chapter 3. Expressions: XQuery Building Blocks

The basic unit of evaluation in the XQuery language is the expression. A query contains expressions that can be made up of a number of sub-expressions, which may themselves be composed from other sub-expressions. This chapter explains the XQuery syntax, and covers the most basic types of expressions that can be used in queries: literals, variables, function calls, and comments.

Categories of Expressions

A query can range in complexity from a single expression such as 2+3, to a complex composite expression like a FLWOR. Within a FLWOR, there may be other expressions, such as $prodDept = "ACC", which is a comparison expression, and doc("catalog.xml")/catalog/product, which is a path expression. Within these expressions, there are further expressions, such as "ACC", which is a literal, and $prodDept, which is a variable reference.

The categories of expressions available are summarized in Table 3-1, along with the number of the chapter that covers them. Every expression evaluates to a sequence, which may be a single atomic value, a single node, the empty sequence, or multiple atomic values and/or nodes.

Table 3-1. Categories of expressions

Category

Description

Operators or keywords

Chapter

Primary

The basics: literals, variables, function calls, and parenthesized expressions

 

3

Comparison

Comparison based on value, node identity, or document order

=, !=, <, <=, >, >=, eq, ne, lt, le, gt, ge, is, <<, >>

3

Conditional

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

XSLT

XSLT

Doug Tidwell
XPath and XPointer

XPath and XPointer

John Simpson
XQuery Kick Start

XQuery Kick Start

James McGovern, Per Bothner, Kurt Cagle, James Linn, Vaidyanathan Nagarajan

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596006349Errata