Jerry King, general manager for XML products at DataDirect, says, "The promise XQuery brings to dramatically simplifying and accelerating data integration and querying XML is unprecedented. The emerging standard will revolutionize data exchange and the way applications are developed and deployed."

Based on these observations, DataDirect has released a list that names the top XQuery and XML developments for 2005. What is clear, XQuery is the catalyst, bringing about change in multiple areas.

King added, "The momentum has been growing, and the database community is anxiously awaiting 2005 because it is destined to be the year for XQuery."

According to DataDirect, XQuery is steadily moving towards approval by W3C as an official standard. This is one reason such radical changes will be introduced to enterprise software creation.

To push the transition to XQuery, it is believed powerful developer tools will be created. The incentive for doing so rests in XQuery's natural use for XML content management applications, XML reporting, native XML programming, data integration, and Web message processing.

Application creation will be accelerated due in large part to XQuery's ability to query both XML and XQuery. An improvement over XML's single query capabilities. Mixed content in nonrelational databases can be accessed with XQuery, which according to DataDirect will increase its popularity for data integration. By comparison, XML is much weaker and does not posses anywhere near XQuery's ability to work with discordant data formats.

Data access will increasingly fall under XQuery's auspices with the introduction of the XQuery API for Java (XQJ), a powerful new Java specification for processing query results in a JDBC-like fashion. DataDirect says to "look for data access component vendors to provide embeddable components, which will fully support standards-based XQuery data access through XQJ for all major databases, including Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, Sybase, and MySQL, as early as mid 2005."

Technical benefits seen with XQuery will carry over to other languages. Closely related to XSLT, a language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, there will be a need for sophisticated XSLT editors, debuggers, mappers and performance profilers in 2005, for the same reason XQuery tools will be in demand.

DataDirect is such a staunch supporter of XQuery it has predicted changes based on technologies not yet developed. XML Data Service, for example, is an emerging design pattern involving the use of XQuery to provide unified views of distributed, heterogeneous data sources via a Web service interface. In 2005, developers will begin to leverage XQuery and XQJ to build XML Data Services that perform increasingly complex data integration tasks.