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The XQuery language is designed specifically for XML programming and data integration, and programmers are more productive using XQuery for these tasks. However, many enterprise applications are built on the Java platform, and often require functionality not found in XQuery; for instance, many XML programs need to use the Web Services functionality of J2EE. On the Java platform, XML is accessed and manipulated as a DOM tree, a SAX stream, or as a StAX stream.

The XQuery API for Java, currently under development as JSR 225, lets programmers have the best of both worlds, using XQuery for XML programming and data integration, with full access to the J2SE and J2EE platforms. XQJ allows a Java program to connect to XML data sources, prepare and issue XQueries, and process the results as XML. This functionality is similar to that of JDBC® Java API for SQL, but the query language for XQJ is XQuery.

This article shows how XQJ is used to issue XQueries and obtain results. Next, it shows how XQJ can be used to query DOM trees, perform joins between XML and relational sources, obtain results using StAX, and issue prepared XQueries (similar to JDBC's prepared statements). Finally, we show four complete, working XQJ programs, including one that uses StAX to handle output. These programs are based on the Early Draft Review of JSR-225, released in May 2004. Code examples were tested with DataDirect XQuery™ 1.0, which implements XQuery and XQJ.

Querying Relational Data to Create XML

Although XQuery is a native XML query language, it is often used to query XML views of relational data to create XML results. Most Java programmers are familiar with the JDBC API. This example shows the similarities between JDBC and XQJ, using an XQJ connection to query a relational database and print out the results to the standard output.

SQL/XML Views of the Tables

The examples in this article are based on financial stock data, with a set of users and stock holdings for each user. DataDirect XQuery relational data using the SQL/XML mappings defined by SQL:2003. Here's the SQL/XML description of the USERS table (only a few rows are shown).

<USERS>
   <row>
      <USERID>Minollo</USERID>
      <FIRSTNAME>Carlo</FIRSTNAME>
      <LASTNAME>Innocenti</LASTNAME>
      <OTHERNAME/>
      <MEMBERSINCE>2004-07-16T00:00:00</MEMBERSINCE>
   </row>
   <row>
      <USERID>Jonathan</USERID>
      <FIRSTNAME>Jonathan</FIRSTNAME>
      <LASTNAME>Robie</LASTNAME>
      <OTHERNAME>William</OTHERNAME>
      <MEMBERSINCE>2004-04-03T00:00:00</MEMBERSINCE>
   </row>
</USERS>

Here's the XML mapping of the HOLDINGS table, which contains the (fictional!) stock holdings for each user. Again, only a few rows are shown.

<HOLDINGS>
   <row>
      <USERID>Jonathan</USERID>
      <STOCKTICKER>AMZN</STOCKTICKER>
      <SHARES>3000.0000</SHARES>
   </row>
   <row>
      <USERID>Minollo</USERID>
      <STOCKTICKER>EBAY</STOCKTICKER>
      <SHARES>4000.0000</SHARES>
   </row>
   <row>
      <USERID>Jonathan</USERID>
      <STOCKTICKER>IBM</STOCKTICKER>
      <SHARES>2500.0000</SHARES>
   </row>
   <row>
      <USERID>Minollo</USERID>
      <STOCKTICKER>LU</STOCKTICKER>
      <SHARES>40000.0000</SHARES>
   </row>
   <!-- !!! SNIP !!! -->
</HOLDINGS>

Querying SQL/XML Views

For relational data, XQuery often is used as a reporting language, combining data to display on a web page or for use in a web message. Here's an XQuery that returns results that show the stocks held by each user.

for $u in collection("USERS")/USERS/row
return
  <user>
   <name>
    {
        $u/FIRSTNAME,
        $u/LASTNAME
    }
   </name>
   { 
    for $h in collection("HOLDINGS")/HOLDINGS/row
    where $h/USERID = $u/USERID
    return      
      <stock>
       {
        $h/STOCKTICKER,
        $h/SHARES
       }
      </stock>
    }
</user>

This query uses an XQuery function named collection() to address tables-the collection() function accepts a string and returns a sequence of nodes. In this sample query, we bind the variables $u and $h to the SQL/XML view of rows in the USERS and HOLDINGS tables.

The XQuery API for Java (XQJ), currently in development under the Java Community Process as JSR 225, lets programmers use XQuery for XML processing and data integration applications, with full support for the Java Standard Edition (Java SE) and Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) platforms. XQJ allows a Java program to connect to XML data sources, prepare and issue XQueries, and process the results as XML. This functionality is similar to that of JDBC, but the query language for XQJ is XQuery.




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