Lux: A Lightweight, Statically Typed XML Update Language

Several proposals for updating XML have been introduced. Many of them have a rather complicated semantics due to the interaction of side-effects and updates, and some proposals also complicate the semantics of XQuery because arbitrary side-effecting update statements are allowed inside queries. Moreover, static typechecking has not been studied for any proposed XML update language. In this paper, we survey prior work on XML update languages and motivate an alternative approach to updating XML. We introduce an update language called Lux, which stands for Lightweight Updates for XML. Lux can perform relational database-style updates, has a simple, deterministic operational semantics, and has a sound static type system based on regular expression types and structural subtyping.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: PLANX
• Authors: James Cheney
• Keywords: PLANX 2007, Programming Languages, Several Proposals, Side-effecting Update Statements, Xml Update Languages