Okay, so I'll admit it: I have a number of subscriptions to search engines that scan for a lot of different things. One of them is pure egoism on my part: a Search on my name. Well it seems that a seemingly nice lady in Tuscon, Arizon -- also a Zevon Fan, also an INJT, using blog entitled "Enjoy Every Sandwich" and possibly named Kristen -- summed up this blog tersely:
I can't bear to read anymore of his Enjoy Every Sandwich blog as I do not understand most of it and many of his links do not work (at least in Safari). From his resume, he appears to be a big fan of Microsoft. Ickety.
Ickety? Oh, I suppose the Safari reference was a dead give away. What we have here is somebody who prefers Rubens to Monte Cristos. Rubens, but like the whole Apple platform, its aren't my favorite: the Sauerkraut gets in the way of things and the cheese tends to lose its identity in the whole production. And of course, you can't have a Ruben without the Dressing or the Sauerkraut and still call it a "Ruben." That's just part of the "Ruben Experience." One true way. I like Monte Cristos: fried, of course -- what's not love about that -- with a nice balance of Ham, Turkey and Cheese. And, yes, I'd liken that being a Microsoft Platform Bigot. For the most part our Ham, Cheese and Turkey seem to play nicer together, as long as you don't mind "running on french toast."
But that doesn't mean I'll refuse use an Apple any more than I wouldn't enjoy a Ruben or read her blog. I suppose if you understand this blog, the links work. And if you don't, fine, it doesn't matter that much. What does matter is that you enjoyed the experience. Its a shame that Kristen's turned away. After all, wasn't Warren's last bit of wisdom for us "I know how much you are supposed to enjoy every sandwich?"
Will there ever be a .NET XQuery implementation from Microsoft?
I think is yes only if:
- Enough people "storm the gates" of folks like Michael Champion and Michael Rys demanding it.
- Sufficient demand can also be raised for XSLT, since, apparently, the building of an XSLT2 processor could bootstrap an XQuery processor quite nicely.
- Microsoft internal CLR team architectural mindshare leaders are willing to help resource the effort. The WebData alone probably lacks sufficient resources to do all they already have on their plates and this.
This doesn't even consider XLINQ. Part of the question that we the community need to answer is what doesn't XLINQ do for us as well as XQuery. Frankly -- having spend a good amount with both -- XLINQ wins if for no other reason that it gives us the ability to manipulate instances, not just query them. As I've said before, at least part of the reason that Microsoft doesn't have client-side XQuery in Whidbey (.NET 2.0) is that the standards body moved so slowly to produce a query-only spec. Yet clearly the need to both query and perform updates, modified and deletes on instances is really required by most applications.
So no, Joe, I don't think the stars are really aligned right for there to be client-side XQuery in .NET in the next few years. There's simply not enough user demand for it or for XSLT2 and, compared to XLINQ, its likely a lower priority for the team.
My biggest beef about all of this isn't that we likely won't have client-side XQuery or that we will have XLINQ. Pragmatically speaking, I don't care *how* I query as much as I care that I *can* query. However, as somebody that believes in open, community driven standards, I'm really disappointed to see things turn out like this. Some folks might say that "here's another case of Microsoft shoddly adopting a standard then trying to obsolete it." I really don't think that was anybody at Microsoft's intention here. Rather, management made the decision -- after looking at a number of alternatives -- and decided that it was best for their customers to go down a different path. Fine, at worst its shame on them for making that decision for us, but let's be honest: shame on us for not giving them a reason not to.