Re: pragmas and output properties

Hi Michael,

> > one of the new things available in today"s snapshot is support ~
> > for XQuery pragmas. A pragma is used to provide additional information
> > to the XQuery engine. This is very handy to specify things like output
> > properties.
>
> So far I've been doing this via the <properties> element within
> the XQuery body, e.g.
> <query ...>
> <text>...</text>
> <properties>
> <property name="indent" value="yes"/>    </properties>
> </query>
>
> Could you clarify the relationship and relative status of these two
> approaches? I.e.
> are pragmas intended to replace the <properties> element, and if not, what
> is the precedence of settings which (presumably accidentally) might be
> passed in by both methods?

In general, output properties set by the exist:serialize pragma should 
overwrite properties set through the various interfaces (REST, xmlrpc 
methods, XMLDB API). This is for practical reasons only: query writers should 
be able to overwrite the default settings specified by the Java application.

Setting properties in the POST request content is still possible. However, I 
planned to support server-side XQueries that are stored in the database and 
executed through a GET request. In this case, using pragmas for output 
settings is an elegant solution.

Wolfgang


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170
Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on
who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM.
Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php