Liam,

I think that answers my question and is what I expected. So basically BaseX and maybe XQuery as a whole does not respect or understand the id/idref concept formally and thus will not automatically join. This isn't a 'problem' so much as an attempt to insure I do not reproduce what already exists. 

Does this sound correct? For example if I had a node named item with 2 child nodes simply referencing another childitem node by ID but not inline. 

with item as the context node. If I wrote:

childitem

I would expect the nodes being referenced not the inline nodes with the references on them. But this is not how it works.. Right? I need to handle the relationship explicitly.

- James

> Subject: Re: [basex-talk] Question regarding BaseX support for id and idref
> From: liam@w3.org
> To: james.jw@hotmail.com
> CC: basex-talk@mailman.uni-konstanz.de
> Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 21:36:34 -0400
>
> On Mon, 2013-05-13 at 19:15 -0600, James Wright wrote:
> > [...] I know the xml standard defines id and idref however I have not
> > been able to find any documentation on these in BaseX or XML in
> > general. For example does BaseX handle idiosyncrasies of id and idref
> > or must I handle these in my queries? For example:
> > let $context := <item id="10">
>
> Note that an XML ID must be an identifier, so must start with a name
> start character (a letter)...
>
> > let $context := <item id="10">
> > <child idref="2" /><item><item id="20"> <child idref="2" /> <child idref="1" /></item><item id="30" />
> > <child id="1" name="firstChild" /><child id="2" name="secondChild" />
> > for $itemWithFirstChild in $context/item[child/@name = 'firstChild']return $itemWithFirstChild/@id
>
> I think this got garbled somewhere - e.g. there aren't enough end tags.
> Make sure you turn off HTML formatting in your email program.
>
> > I would like this to return "10 20"Now this example uses a dynamic
> > context node however in the application these would exist as nodes in
> > the database...
> > If it does fully support this how do I enable it or get it to work?
>
> One way to get started with BaseX would be to use the "basexgui" program
> in the bin directory to create a database (there's also a command-line
> program to do it; I use the Perl and PHP APIs too on
> www.fromoldbooks.org).
>
> People usually do joins by value in XML and XQuery; ID/IDREF only work
> with older DTD technology, or with xml:id; I don't know if BaseX has
> support for them. But if it does the values must be IDs :)
>
> So you're on the right lines.
>
> > Also what about XLink?
>
> It's not used very much. As a standard it solved the wrong problems,
> unfortunately. Easy for me to say in hindsight.
>
> The XQuery Use Cases on www.w3.org/TR may be helpful; there's also a
> chapter on XQuery using BaseX for examples in a book I co-authored last
> year, "Beginning XML" 5th edition.
>
> Liam
>
> --
> Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
> Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
> Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml
>