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Misunderstanding: XQuery lacks an update mechanism

It is true that the XQuery specification does not include an update mechanism. Additionally, at the time this article is being written, the XQuery working group is on "Last Call" status for the main XQuery specification and few working group members are willing to spend their time on the update specification. I expect the SQL-style approach will wind up in the XQuery specification. Updates will likely be expressed in a set of standalone operations that mimic and support existing relational database commands. However, some implementers and existing implementations offer a more free-form way of composing an update with XQuery.

It is important to note that most XQuery implementations provide an update mechanism of their own. For example, one popular XQuery engine implements an extension that provides Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) operations on XML and non-XML data.