Looking at XQuery has been on my to do list for quite a while. In that while I always assumed that XQuery was something over and above XSLT – added some fabulous new capabilities. Well, I finally took the time to have a look at XQuery this weekend and I was kinda disappointed, even frustrated.They essentially do the same thing in different ways.My initial reaction was “why on earth would the W3C go and create XML Query when they already had XSLT?” But now I’ve softened, of course there is value in having different programming languages even if they are often used for essentially the same purposes. Nevertheless, I’m still a bit frustrated and here is why. After learning/using languages like Basic, Pascal and C/C++ as an undergrad and for my first post-grad work, I went to Indiana University for another stint at grad school, studying programming languages with the great Dan Friedman and that’s where it happened – I became a functional programmer.Since learning XSLT a great many years ago I have often noted my delight that functional programming had finally found its way out of the predominantly academic space into the mainstream, commercial world. And then a sequential alternative to it is created that allows folks to continue with their familiar paradigm, robbing them the opportunity afforded when they make the transition over to functional thinking. :-(Okay, I won’t loose a lot of sleep over this but I am still very interested in how XQuery was positioned at it’s onset. How was the standard justified? Was it just that, because it is so pervasive, there was a desire for a SQL like alternative?