XQuery Visualization (GUI) for beginners

[kgw]

Hi, I'm interested to know if there is any tool for XQuery visualization (GUI), especially for beginners? So that by using the tool, the user can formulate the XQuery by 'drawing' in the GUI (drag and drop, etc) without knowing / understanding XQuery syntax. The program then translate the drawing to XQuery then using the XQuery code to query database.It is something like this:User -> GUI (automatically translate to XQuery) -> query XML data I have tried Stylus Studio XQuery Mapper and Altova MapForce. But they are meant for advanced users / developers, not general / beginner users. I have also read about XQBE (XQuery by Example) http://dbgroup.elet.polimi.it/xquery/XQBE.html But I feel that the visualization is too complicated for beginners. Regards, Klarinda

[boen_robot]

It would be A LOT easier to understand XQuery if you know XPath scince XPath is part of XQuery's syntax. Tutorials and "try it" examples are avaiable on W3Schools. You will then be perfectly comfortable with XQuery's spesifics, though I presume that you'll ask yourself a lot of questions when you learn them, but that's another thing.Or do you actually already know them but you want to increase productivity? Hmm... I don't know. Perhaps theese tools are the only ones avaiable, scince XQuery is not even a reccomendation yet.

[kgw]

Hi,Actually I want to make a GUI which can be used to query XML data without writing any XQuery code, but by 'drawing' on the GUI. The program would translate the drawing to XQuery then using the XQuery code generated to query the database. My target users would be those who do not really understand about XML or XQuery.That's why I want to see if there is any existing XQuery visualization software and maybe I can reuse the idea or design. But so far, I only find Stylus Studio XQuery Mapper and Altova MapForce which are targeted for developer and XQBE (XQuery By Example) which I think too complicated for beginner.XQuery is not even a recommendation yet? But I thought it is already widely used. I'm new to XML / XQuery so I really appreciate your advice. Thanks,Klarinda

[boen_robot]

XQuery is wisely popular because it has many features over XPath, but it's not used because it's not a reccomendation yet. The interest in it however is very strong and I think that such GUIs you want to make would be avaiable as soon as browsers support XSLT 2.0 which is going to use XQuery along with XPath to get data from XMLs.As for releasing such an application at this state... it might be good to start it's core but you shouldn't get all the details right, scince the specification isn't even complete. Which reminds me... in order to build such an application, you would need to have a perfect understanding of all XQuery's abilities. In order to learn all abot them, see XQuery's specifications.From what I understand, you want to have what MS Access is to SQL, but to XML instead, right? Well, here comes our second problem. How is the user going to see the results of it's selection? SQL databases are suppose to be tabular, but XML documents are suppose to be plain text. That is something I can't help you with, simply because I'm used to writing XPath expressions "manually".

[kgw]

Hi,Thanks for your advice. For the result of the selection, I believe tree is good enough. Because XML document itself can be viewed as tree. And since it is GUI, I know the XQuery features it can support will be limited. And the more features I want to include, the more complicated it will be. So I will need to compromise between features and simplicity. (my target users are novice-XML users)Anyway, I haven't come out with the design yet, but I hope I can make a good one :)Regards,Klarinda