Elsevier has announced xqDoc, an open source cross-referencing tool for XQuery applications, and recognizes Darin McBeath, an Elsevier employee in the company's Advanced Technology Group, as the developer of the code. The tool is now freely available to the open source community.
XQuery, under development by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), is a new query/programming language based on XML and used in conjunction with XML databases such as MarkLogic, a commercial database, and eXist on the open source side.
McBeath has been developing applications in XQuery for the past several years, and as more developers within Elsevier began to experiment with and use XQuery, McBeath received recurring requests for sample XQuery code and supporting explanation. As McBeath began to assist developers with their XQuery applications, he realized the importance of a XQuery cross-referencing tool to expedite understanding of an XQuery application.
The goal of xqDoc is to provide a vendor neutral solution for documenting XQuery applications, as well as tools to generate a user-friendly representation of this documentation and cross-referencing information (e.g., how different functions are used by each other). This is accomplished through several components, including a new commenting convention that extends the currently defined XQuery comment style. This convention is modeled after Java's Javadoc commenting style, and provides a way to document XQuery source code. Javadoc is a tool for providing the same sort of information for Java programs that xqDoc provides for XQuery programs. It is hoped that xqDoc achieves the same level of adoption and success for XQuery that Javadoc has for Java.
(www.elsevier.com; www.reedelsevier.com; www.xqdoc.org)
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