By using XQuery and XSL, you could create a customer extranet that presents a unified view of these three repositories without having to move any of the underlying data.

The survey of 550 XML developers finds that 52% already started working with XQuery in the last 12 months and another 33% have plans to start using XQuery this year.

Developers seeking to support a combination of data formats won’t have to look beyond XQuery 2.0, which will optimize the deployment and integration of XML, relational and legacy data.

A second use for XQuery, according to the Mark Logic guru, is as an integration layer. "You use XQuery to access disparate data sources, each of which represents itself as XML," he said.

The use cases were especially valuable because XQuery’s three major facets — finding, emitting, and correlating XML fragments — span such a wide range of apps.