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XQuery
book

XQuery

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

The Duration Types

XQuery uses three types to represent durations of time: xs:duration, xs:yearMonthDuration, and xs:dayTimeDuration.

The xs:duration type represents a duration of time expressed as a number of years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. Its format is PnYnMnDTnHnMnS, where P is a literal value that starts the expression, nY is the number of years followed by a literal Y, and so on where M refers to months, D refers to days, H refers to hours, the second M refers to minutes, and S refers to seconds. T is a literal value that separates the date and time. The numbers are all integers, except the number of seconds, which may be a decimal number. It is also possible to have a negative duration by preceding the P with a minus sign ().

The xs:duration type is not totally ordered, meaning that values of this type cannot always be compared. For example, if you try to determine whether the xs:duration value P1M is greater than or less than the xs:duration value P30D, it is ambiguous. Months may have 28, 29, 30, or 31 days. So, is 30 days less than a month, or not?

The yearMonthDuration and dayTimeDuration Types

Because xs:duration is not ordered, XQuery defines two types that are derived from duration: xs:yearMonthDuration and xs:dayTimeDuration. By ensuring that month and day components never appear in the same duration, the ambiguity is eliminated.

Values of type xs:yearMonthDuration can only specify years and months, and they are represented as PnYnM. Values ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596006349Errata