Mulberry Technologies, Inc. 17 West Jefferson St., Suite 207 Rockville, MD 20850 '> For , , , and , see the Mulberry Technologies contact page.

: In case of inclement weather, we will follow the weather policy of the host, Mulberry Technologies. In the event that a class day begins late, we will run late; in the event that a class day is canceled, we will do our best to re-schedule the class as soon as possible.

: Mulberry's facilities are on the second floor; access is by stairway; there is neither a ramp nor an elevator. For more information, please contact Black Mesa Technologies at 505/747-4224.

'> ]> Introduction to XQuery XQuery as a tool for working with natural-language documents Española, New Mexico Black Mesa Technologies LLC 2012

No source; created in electronic form.

 XQuery for Documents Introduction to XQuery as a tool for working with natural-language documents &city-state; &course-dates; &date.last.touched;

This two-day hands-on course introduces XQuery as a programming language for work with natural-language documents.

XQuery is a query and transformation language for XML documents. It can be used to translate XML-tagged data into HTML, to modify the tagging of data, and (of course) to search large bodies of XML material. Many XML processing tasks which are possible but inconvenient in Java, C, or Python are much more convenient in XQuery. This course will focus on the use of XQuery with natural-language documents (books, articles, legislation, etc.) encoded in XML.

Hands-on exercises will give students experience actually writing queries for the interrogation and transformation of XML-tagged documents. Participants should have good knowledge of XML syntax; knowledge of XPath and XSLT (1.0 or 2.0) will be helpful but is not a prerequisite. Familiarity with basic programming concepts (input, output, types, flow of control will be helpful (or alternatively, the ability to confront new concepts without fear).

Topics and syllabus

The course is divided into eight sessions, four to a day. Topics include:

Introduction

High-level overview of XQuery, background, goals and purpose of the XQuery spec; Hello, world examples.

Location paths

Relative and absolute location paths; child and descendant axes; attributes, predicates. Other axes.

The XDM data model.

Atomic values

Atomic values; simple types; operations on atomic values; important types.

Sequences

Sequences of items; operations on sequences.

FLWOR (for, let, where, order by, return) expressions; nested expressions.

Function declarations; modules; function libraries.

Regular expressions and string manipulation

The standard function library. Regular-expression functions; other string manipulations.

Collections

Collections; operating on a collection.

Full-text

The full-text extensions to XQuery.

What next? Individual work and/or Q/A

Where do you go from here? Individual work or questions and answers; wrapup.

Prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable reading XML documents. Familiarity with XPath, XSLT, and XSD (XML Schema) may be helpful but is not required. Programming experience is not required.

Students may bring their own laptops or may use a classroom machine.

Logistics
When and where

This course will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. &course-dow;, &course-dates;, at &course-address; Thanks to &hostorg; for hosting the course.

&local-info;
Who

The course is organized by Black Mesa Technologies LLC and will be taught by C. M. Sperberg-McQueen.

Michael Sperberg-McQueen is the founder of Black Mesa Technologies. He has served as co-editor of the XML 1.0 specification, the Text Encoding Initiative's Guidelines for Text Encoding and Interchange, and the XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 specification; in 2003 he was awarded the XML Cup for contributions to the development and spread of XML.

&hostorg-inc; is providing space (for which thanks), but has no other involvement with the course.

Breaks and meals

: Coffee and simple pastries will be provided.

: For lunch, you are on your own. A list of nearby eateries will be provided; you are also welcome to bring your own lunch.

Price

&course-price; per student.

Payment can be made by check, credit card, Paypal payment, or government training/purchase order on or before the first day of class.

: For payments received before &earlybird-deadline;, a ten percent discount is offered (&earlybird-price; instead of &course-price; for the course).

Registration / Info

Space in the course is limited.

To reserve a space, to register, or to ask for more information, please send email to info@blackmesatech.com or call us at 505/747-4224.

Announcements of future courses

To receive announcements of future Black Mesa Technologies courses on XForms and other topics, you can subscribe to blackmesatech-announce-l.