XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 major new functions

Valuable features have been added to XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 reflecting productivity and feature improvements beyond the XPath 1.0 and XSLT 1.0 standards.

XPath 2.0

XPath 2.0...

Supports the XPath 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Data Model (XDM), which is based on sequences of heterogeneous items including nodes and primitive types. This replaces and improves on the XPath 1.0 node-set support and becomes the foundation of XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 data navigation.

• Adds a collection of functions and operators, replacing the XPath 1.0 requirement for proprietary extension mechanisms. These functions and operators help with date and time handling, enhance the string manipulation, support regular expression matching and tokenization, extend the number handling, and add functions for sequence manipulation.

• Supports schema-aware processing, which allows for data navigation based on XML schema information for not only built-in schema types, but also user-defined schema types.

• Adds condition (if/then/else branches), iterative (for loops), and quantified expressions (some and every tests) typical of other languages.

• Adds named collations across multiple functions allowing for locale-specific operation.

• Provides a backwards-compatibility mode to run most XPath 1.0 expressions unchanged.

XSLT 2.0

XSLT 2.0...

• Is based on XPath 2.0, taking advantage of all new XPath 2.0 features. Temporary trees have been added to allow navigation of constructed trees during transformation. User-defined functions can be defined in the XSLT language and are callable using XPath 2.0.

• Can write to multiple result documents in a single stylesheet execution.

• Supports regular expressions to analyze and separate strings.

• Allows variables and parameters to be typed, therefore improving the reliability of stylesheets and functions.

• Supports schema-aware processing, which allows XSLT 2.0 to check for valid input, temporary trees, and output documents.

• Supports initial named templates, which allows the processor to start with a defined template instead of having to match the input document, a feature commonly used with loading documents programmatically using the XPath 2.0 collection and document functions.

• Comparisons in sorting, grouping, and keys are supported with any data type and can use locale-specific named collations.

• XHTML has been added to XSLT 2.0 as a valid output format.

• The next-match instruction allows the same node to be processed with multiple templates.

• The character-map instruction allows fine grained control of serialization of characters.

• Added addition instructions for transforming and formatting dates and times.

• Added support for tunnel parameters, which allows parameters to be passed through multiple template calls without having to declare the parameter in each template call.

• Added multiple mode support to allow templates to apply to specific modes of processing within a stylesheet.

• Unparsed text can be incorporated into the data processed by a stylesheet, which then can be tokenized with the new regular expression support.

• Provides a backwards-compatibility mode to run most XSLT 1.0 stylesheets unchanged.

XQuery 1.0

• XQuery 1.0 is based on XPath 2.0, allowing XQuery 1.0 to take advantage of all new XPath 2.0 features. XQuery 1.0 builds on XPath 2.0 to provide full XML Query capability.
• XQuery's FLOWR (For, Let, Order by, Where, Return) expression allows for complicated joins across XML datasets. FLOWR allows for query of large documents or collections of documents. XQuery allows for the mixture of direct XML construction along with computed content returned from FLOWR expressions.
• XQuery has the ability to define functions and variables with syntax that is familiar to users of other languages, allowing larger programs to be defined around the data-query operations.
• XQuery 1.0 supports schema-aware processing, which allows input and constructed documents and elements to be validated.
• XQuery module support allows queries to be broken up into reusable fragments.