XQuery

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XQuery (XML Query) is a query and functional programming language that queries and transforms collections of structured and unstructured data, usually in the form of XML, text and with vendor-specific extensions for other data formats (JSON, binary, etc.). The language is developed by the XML Query working group of the W3C. The work is closely coordinated with the development of XSLT by the XSL Working Group; the two groups share responsibility for XPath, which is a subset of XQuery.

XQuery 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation on January 23, 2007.^[4]

XQuery 3.0 became a W3C Recommendation on April 8, 2014.^[5]

XQuery 3.1 became a W3C Recommendation on March 21, 2017.^[6]

"The mission of the XML Query project is to provide flexible query facilities to extract data from real and virtual documents on the World Wide Web, therefore finally providing the needed interaction between the Web world and the database world. Ultimately, collections of XML files will be accessed like databases."^[7]