XQuery Extensions

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This article is part of the XQuery Portal. It lists specific extensions and optimizations of the BaseX XQuery processor.

Option Declarations

Local database options can be set in the prolog of an XQuery expression. In the option declaration, options need to be bound to the Database Module namespace. All values will be reset after the evaluation of a query:

declare option db:chop 'false';
doc('doc.xml')

Pragmas

Local database options can be assigned locally via pragmas:

(# db:chop false #) { doc('doc.xml') }

Annotations

The following implementation-defined annotations are available:

  • %basex:inline([limit]) enforces the inlining of a function. Example:

Example:

declare option db:inlinelimit '0';
declare %basex:inline function local:id($x) { $x };
local:id(123)

In this query, function inlining has been deactivated by setting inlinelimit to 0. The annotation enforces inlining for the given function, though, resulting in the optimized query expression 123.

If an integer is specified as annotation argument, it will be interpreted a local inline limit.

  • %basex:lazy enforces the lazy evaluation of a global variable. Example:

Example:

declare %basex:lazy variable $january := doc('does-not-exist');
if(month-from-date(current-date()) == 1) then $january else ()

The annotation ensures that an error will only be thrown if the condition yields true. Without the annotation, the error will always be thrown, because the referenced document is not found.

Serialization

  • Since Version 8.4, basex is used as the default serialization method: nodes are serialized as XML, atomic values are serialized as string, and items of binary type are output in their native byte representation. Function items (including maps and arrays) are output just like with the adaptive method.
  • csv allows you to output XML nodes as CSV data (see the CSV Module for more details).

For more information and some additional BaseX-specific parameters, see the article on Serialization.

Optimizations

Non-determinism

In XQuery, deterministic functions are “guaranteed to produce ·identical· results from repeated calls within a single ·execution scope· if the explicit and implicit arguments are identical”. In BaseX, many extension functions are non-deterministic or side-effecting. If an expression is internally flagged as non-deterministic, various optimizations that might change their execution order will not be applied.

(: QUERY A... :)
let $n := 456
for $i in 1 to 2
return $n

(: ...will be optimized to :)
for $i in 1 to 2
return 456

(: QUERY B will not be rewritten :)
let $n := random:integer()
for $i in 1 to 2
return $n

In some cases, functions may contain non-deterministic code, but the query compiler may not be able to detect this statically. See the following example:

for $read in (file:read-text#1, file:read-binary#1)
let $ignored := non-deterministic $read('input.file')
return ()

Two non-deterministic functions will be bound to $read, and the result of the function call will be bound to $ignored. As the variable is not referenced in the subsequent code, the let clause would usually be discarded by the compiler. In the given query, however, execution will be enforced because of the BaseX-specific non-deterministic keyword.

Other Extensions

Separate articles exist on Full Text and Update extensions.