> I agree that sometimes this can be overused and that tracking 
> variable 
> declarations across miles of files is no fun, but I also 
> agree with David 
> that it's a useful technique that can contribute to good 
> code. A balance 
> must be struck. Documenting your code (with comments if 
> necessary) can also 
> help the general problem of code opacity.

It also wouldn't do any harm to follow the convention which XQuery imposes
on you: global variables declared in one module should have a namespace
associated with that module. 

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/