XQuery/XPath: Using count() and max() function for return of element with highest count

Question

I have an XML file that contains authors and editors.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?oxygen RNGSchema="file:textbook.rnc" type="compact"?>
<books xmlns="books">

    <book ISBN="i0321165810" publishername="OReilly">
        <title>XPath</title>
        <author>
            <name>
                <fname>Priscilla</fname>
                <lname>Walmsley</lname>
            </name>
        </author>
        <year>2007</year>
        <field>Databases</field>
    </book>

    <book ISBN="i0321165812" publishername="OReilly">
        <title>XQuery</title>
        <author>
           <name>
               <fname>Priscilla</fname>
               <lname>Walmsley</lname>
            </name>
        </author>
        <editor>
            <name>
                <fname>Lisa</fname>
                <lname>Williams</lname>
            </name>
        </editor>
        <year>2003</year>
        <field>Databases</field>
    </book>

    <publisher publishername="OReilly">
        <web-site>www.oreilly.com</web-site>
        <address>
            <street_address>hill park</street_address>
            <zip>90210</zip>
            <state>california</state>
        </address>
        <phone>400400400</phone>
        <e-mail>[email protected]</e-mail>
        <contact>
            <field>Databases</field>
            <name>
                <fname>Anna</fname>
                <lname>Smith</lname>
            </name>
        </contact>
    </publisher>
</books>

I'm looking for a way to return the person who has been listed the most times as an author and/or editor. The solution should be XQuery 1.0 (XPath 2.0) compatible.

I was thinking about using a FLWOR query to iterate through all authors and editors, then doing a count of unique authors/editors, then returning the author(s)/editor(s) that match the highest count. But I haven't been able to find the proper solution.

Does anyone have any suggestion as to how such a FLWOR query would be written? Could this be done in a simpler way, using XPath?

Answer 1

This may help:

declare default element namespace 'books';
(for $name in distinct-values($doc/books/*/*/name)
 let $entries := $doc/books/*[data(*/name) = $name]
 order by count($entries) descending
 return $entries/*/name)[1]