The W3C has published eight new XML standards to support the ability to query, transform, and access XML data and documents. The primary specifications include XQuery 1.0, XSL Transformations (XSLT) 2.0, and XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0 amongst others.

XSLT 2.0 adds significant new functionality to the already widely deployed XSLT 1.0, which enables the transformation and styled presentation of XML documents. XQuery allows data mining of everything from memos and Web service messages to multi-terabyte relational databases. Both the XSLT 2.0 and the XQuery specifications rely on XPath 2.0, also significantly enriched from its previous version.

“XQuery will serve as a unifying interface for access to XML data, much as SQL has done for relational data,” said Don Chamberlin of IBM Almaden Research Center, co-inventor of the original SQL Query language and one of the co-editors of XQuery 1.0. “Since virtually any kind of information can be represented using XML, I expect XQuery to play a central role in unifying information from many different sources. Companies across a wide range of industries can use XQuery to pull together structured and semi-structured information for processing in a unified way.”

“This is a red-letter day for XSLT users,” said Michael Kay, editor of the XSLT 2.0 specification, “both for those who have been waiting patiently for this Recommendation to appear before they could use the new features, and for those who have taken a gamble by deploying the new technology before its final stamp of approval. Our biggest achievement, in my view, has been to deliver a huge step forward in functionality and developer productivity, while also retaining a very high level of backwards compatibility, thereby keeping transition costs to the minimum.”

The eight new standards published in the XML family by the W3C are:

• XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0
• XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0
• XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language
• XML Syntax for XQuery 1.0 (XQueryX)
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model (XDM)
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators
• XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics
• XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Serialization