Some years ago … running anything interesting on a Linux platform was a geekish activity involving compilation, dependency-hunting and many other time-consuming activities that put quite a few people off. In the interim, non-technical Linux users (like me!) have become used to packages that do all this black magic for them. So I was a bit disappointed when unzipping the Ubuntu installation files gave me nothing I could run and no clear instructions (at least at my level) for what I had to do with the contents of the archive.

Can someone, please, give me clear, simple instructions that cover:
  • what extra programs I may need to install before being able to compile/installe BaseX
  • what I have to do, step by step, to compile/installe BaseX
Of course, an even better answer would be "run this install script" … :-}

Thanks in advance for help and advice.

On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 1:48 PM, Niels Grundtvig Nielsen <communicator.ngn@gmail.com> wrote:
The next big test for me is, will BaseX install as easily on my Ubuntu box at home as it did on a Windows PC at work … hope so, because the interface is a much better match for the sort of things I want to do with an XML database than the/an other free option I tried.

On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 1:16 PM, Menashè Eliezer <meliezer@ogs.trieste.it> wrote:
Hi Niels,
Just confirming BaseX is very good. I've confronted its performance and support to the biggest open source alternative, which I won't mention its name here.
With kind regards,
Menashè
On 02/02/2015 02:48 PM, Bridger Dyson-Smith wrote:
Hi Niels,

BaseX has some very nice documentation in the wiki [1]. The WIkibooks XQuery document can be helpful[2] and Priscilla Walmsley's XQuery book is an absolutely fantastic reference. 

Hope that's helpful.
Cheers,
Bridger


On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 8:42 AM, Niels Grundtvig Nielsen <communicator.ngn@gmail.com> wrote:
BaseX already looks/feels like a program I am going to enjoy using, even with the general challenge that I don't know enough about xQuery. I would welcome suggestions for anywhere to find a friendly introduction!

My first specific challenge is trying to under the syntax for replace. In the code, I've managed to retrieve a single xml document where <title> contains "35. Andan" … I made a copy/paste error, and in this document the value of title should be '35. Andantino' instead of '35. Andantino mesto'. My experiment is obviously incorrect, so I'd welcome tips on what's wrong with it.

//score[contains(title, '35. Andan')]//title
replace value of (title) with '35. Andantino'

Thanks in advance!