DataDirect Technologies, the industry leading provider of XML and XQuery development tools and XQuery processing components for data integration, announced that 52% of XML developers have already started working with XQuery in the last 12 months and another 33% have plans to start using XQuery in 2005. This is just one of many key findings of a newly published, comprehensive XQuery Industry Study conducted by DataDirect Technologies of 550 software professionals representing a dynamic range of small, medium and large companies across dozens of industries from 48 countries.

Anecdotally, many indicators might lead one to conclude that XQuery is poised to revolutionize the way enterprise software applications are built, consider the unprecedented level of co-operation among competing software vendors in the XQuery standardization effort, the burgeoning growth in XQuery-enabled software products, widespread adoption of XML technologies, and most importantly, the industry's clear need for a standard technology that addresses querying and manipulating XML data. Yet no comprehensive XQuery industry study has been published to challenge the statistical validity of such claims.

"The survey data confirmed what we've known all along, that there's a tremendous interest for an alternative to the tedious, low-level methods presently employed for querying, manipulating and transforming XML data. Our customers often ask us: "How can I get relational and legacy data into XML? And once I have all this XML data, how do I manipulate and integrate it?" For us, XQuery has always been the answer, and we're seeing developers endorse XQuery in record numbers through their actions,  making the decision to develop XQuery enabled solutions today. This is especially remarkable considering that the W3C XQuery Recommendation is still several months from final completion," said Jerry King, vice president of XML products at DataDirect.

King continued, "Building real-world XQuery solutions requires purpose-built tools and components, and the DataDirect XML products group leads the industry by providing innovative products that meet the demands of integration architects and application developers. Stylus Studio includes an intuitive XQuery developer environment that eases the learning curve, simplifies the development process, and enhances productivity. DataDirect XQuery, scheduled for beta release in May, 2005, provides a robust engine to power XQuery applications, delivering the performance needed by advanced data integration applications. Together, DataDirect XML products are revolutionizing the way enterprise applications are built."

DataDirect's 2005 XQuery Industry Study provides an in-depth examination that reveals who is using XQuery, what companies and industries are benefiting from XQuery technologies today, and most importantly, why so many software professionals have chosen to use XQuery to query and process distributed data sources. Who's behind XQuery? The XQuery working group includes representatives from leading enterprise software vendors including DataDirect, BEA, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. These and other members of the W3C working group recently published an XQuery Working Draft (February 2005), and they are expected to publish a final working draft sometime later this year.