This is an XQuery expression, it is not an XPath expression. XPath 2.0 has
no sorting capability; for sorting you need either XSLT or XQuery.

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Darcy Parker [mailto:darcyparker@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 25 September 2008 20:43
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:  order by in XPath 2.0 expression?
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I was just reading a document about XML databases and saw 
> this interesting XPath expression:
> 
> for $i in /bead order by $i/text/@lang return $i
> 
> (Source: 
> http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/berkeley-db/pdf/over
> view-of-berkeley-database-xml.pdf)
> 
> The meaning of it seems obvious - and useful.  But I have 
> never seen "order by" in an XPath expression before.  I had a 
> look online. I don't see anything about it in 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/ or in Michael Kay's XSLT 2.0 
> and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference (4th edition).  As well, 
> I tested using it in saxon and see that it is not recognized...
> 
> Perhaps this is an Oracle extension...?  Has anyone seen this 
> in an XPath implementation before?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Darcy