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Input Functions in XQuery

XQuery uses input functions to identify the data to be queried. There are two input functions:

doc() returns an entire document, identifying the document by a Universal Resource Identifier (URI). To be more precise, it returns the document node.
collection() returns a collection, which is any sequence of nodes that is associated with a URI. This is often used to identify a database to be used in a query.

TABLE 1.1 Entity References	Character Represented
Predefined in XQuery Entity Reference
<	<
>	>
&	&
"	"
'	'

If our sample data is in a file named books.xml, then the following query returns the entire document:

doc("books.xml")

A dynamic error is raised if the doc() function is not able to locate the specified document or the collection() function is not able to locate the specified collection.

Next: "Locating Nodes" Prev: "Literals and Comments"

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