No, not at all. XQuery Update is 100% functional in the strict computer
science sense of the work. It returns two types of values, an XDM and a
list of updates that need to be applied (called a pending update list,
PUL). All actual updates happen after the finish of the query, meaning
that the query still behaves functionally.

John

Scott Trenda wrote:
> I think John is confusing the meaning of "functional" here. Dimitre
> meant "functional" as in "based on functions/templates, like Haskell or
> Scheme (as opposed to imperative)", and perhaps John interpreted
> "functional" to mean "it works, it's not broken".
> 
> :)
> 
> ~ Scott
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Koberg [mailto:rob@xxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:06 PM
> To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re:  XQuery Updates in XSLT
> 
> 
> On Oct 29, 2008, at 2:58 PM, John Snelson wrote:
> 
>> Dimitre Novatchev wrote:
>>> On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 1:39 AM, Jesper Tverskov  
>>> <jesper@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> I have tested XQuery Updates in Saxon SA 9.1 and it works like a
>>>> dream.  I was wondering if something similar is going to be  
>>>> available
>>>> in XSLT?  How can XSLT do without such a killer feature?
>>> Such a feature will be the killer of a nice, functional language, I  
>>> agree... :)
>> XQuery Update is still a 100% functional language - it's pretty good  
>> at
>> succinctly expressing transforms that would otherwise need an identity
>> transform and some number of exception templates.
> 
> This comment makes no sense. It is like saying a pogo stick is pretty  
> good at getting you from point A to point B that would otherwise  
> require a car.
> 
> -Rob
> 
>>
>> John
> 


-- 
John Snelson, Oracle Corporation            http://snelson.org.uk/john
Berkeley DB XML:            http://oracle.com/database/berkeley-db/xml
XQilla:                                  http://xqilla.sourceforge.net