XML Processing and Data Integration with XQuery

Most Web applications exchange data as XML, but they create and process this data with languages that don't have native support for XML. With appropriate middleware, XQuery can dramatically simplify this process, treating all data sources as though they were XML. This article shows how to use XQuery for native XML processing and data integration, briefly explores other technologies used in the same space, and discusses some XQuery extensions for scripting and updates that are under way.