Difference between XPath, XQuery and XPointer

xml xpath xquery
Shashi picture Shashi · May 29, 2009 · Viewed 43k times · Source

What is the difference between XPath, XQuery and XPointer? As far as I know, XQuery is an extended version of XPath. I have some basic knowledge of XPath. Is there any feature available in XPath which is not in XQuery? Yesterday, I heard a new word, XPointer. I am confused. Which language is used for which purpose?

Answer

Matthew Flaschen picture Matthew Flaschen · May 29, 2009

Wikipedia is a good place to start for questions like this. Generally, XPath is a language used to succinctly pinpoint exact XML nodes in a DOM. XQuery is a superset of XPath that also provides FLWOR syntax, which is SQL-like. Finally, XPointer includes XPath, but also provides a simpler position-based addressing scheme.

Of course, you can always read the W3C specs for full details.

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