Thanks Mike, for the answers. They're helpful.

On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 1:00 PM, Michael Kay mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx <
xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> There's nothing in the language spec that constrains where the data comes
> from.
>
> In the Saxon (Java)  implementation, it can come from any Java
> InputStream. Constructing an InputStream that reads from multiple storage
> nodes or an HDFS file system is someone else's job, but I see no reason why
> it should be difficult.
>
> The Saxon implementation does have some limits that mean the input stream
> can't be infinite: most obviously, the nodes are numbered using a 32-bit
> integer. That one is easily fixed, but it's hard to verify that there
> aren't others.
>
> (More generally, I've been surprised that I've seen very little discussion
> about how Java and C# cope with the 32-bit limit, e.g. on array indexing.
> The Streams API seems part of the solution, but it certainly doesn't solve
> the whole problem.)
>




-- 
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi