people (there is some reason why no other XQuery processor chose this solution =96 and why so many mailing list entries from implementations other than BaseX focus so much an namespaces..). Some more introductory details on various namespace intricacies, and the discussion around it, are e.g. found at: http://www.jclark.com/xml/xmlns.htm http://www.stylusstudio.com/xmldev/201004/bythread.html Christian