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XQuery and Native XML Programming

The XQuery language was designed for querying or processing XML. Just as a traditional SQL query takes a set of tables as input and returns an XML table as its result, XQuery takes sequences of XML nodes as input and evaluates to a sequence of XML nodes. However, from the very beginning, XQuery was designed to allow XML views of non-XML data, as well as serialized forms of non-XML data. The reason for this is simple: XML is used to represent almost any conceivable kind of information, and it is easiest to integrate information if it is given a common view.

If everything looks like a nail, all you need is a hammer. Conventional Internet applications often store and query data using SQL, process data using Java or C#, and exchange data as XML. Using XQuery, it is possible to store, query, process, and exchange data as XML. This eliminates some of the mismatches that cause complications when working with XML in other environments.