XQuery 3.1, XQueryX 3.1, XPath 3.1 and supporting documents now a W3C Recommendation

22 March 2017

The XML Query Working Group and the XSLT Working Group have published six documents as W3C Recommendations to strengthen JSON and Web Platform support through maps, arrays, new functions:

• XQuery 3.1: An XML Query Language
• XQueryX 3.1
• XML Path Language (XPath) 3.1
• XQuery and XPath Data Model 3.1
• XPath and XQuery Functions and Operators 3.1
• XSLT and XQuery Serialization 3.1

The 3.1 work extends XPath and XQuery with map and array data structures along with additional functions and operators for manipulating them; a primary motivation was to enhance JSON support.

XPath is a domain-specific language for identifying and extracting nodes from a tree (typically) built from XML or JSON and defined by the XQuery and XPath Data Model) and also an expression language with typed tree nodes and functions among the first-class objects. XPath expressions can call functions and use operators defined in the Functions and Operators specification.

XQuery extends XPath to support complex joins, windowing, grouping and other operations across collections of trees that are potentially stored in high-performance indexed databases.

XQueryX is an XML representation of XQuery expressions.

The Serialization specification describes how results of XPath and XQuery(X) expressions can be delivered in HTML, XHTML, JSON, XML or text.

Ivan Herman and Bill McCoy to address the Publishing and EPUB road-map at EPUB Summit

3 March 2017

Publishing@W3C champion Bill McCoy and W3C Fellow from CWI Dr. Ivan Herman will join an impressive line-up of speakers next week at the EPUB Summit, 9-10 March 2017 in Brussels, Belgium, hosted by W3C member EDRLab. The second such event, EPUB Summit will focus on the future direction of EPUB 3, now under W3C oversight following the combination with IDPF. Registration for the EPUB Summit is still open.

A technical expert in the field, Herman is part of the leadership team of Publishing@W3C as well as the overall Strategy team of W3C. Herman was recently appointed a W3C Fellow by CWI, Amsterdam, where he is a member of the Distributed and Interactive Systems research group. He played a seminal role in the combination of W3C and IDPF and has served as primary technical staff driver for the Digital Publishing at the W3C since inception in 2013. At the EPUB Summit Herman will talk about the IDPF/W3C combination, and the roadmap for upcoming technical work for the development of new standards in Publishing.

McCoy, former Executive Director for IDPF, will lead the closing session at the EPUB Summit, integrating the collective sessions and ideas into the roadmap for Publishing@W3C.

W3C Security Disclosures Best Practices is a W3C Team Submission

2 March 2017

W3C published a Team Submission of W3C Security Disclosures Best Practices, a proposal for security and privacy disclosure programs, which will serve as a basis for further work in the space of security and privacy researchers protection, further to our announcement late January. This document contains a template intended for organizations interested in protecting their users and applications from fraud, malware, and computer viruses, as well as interested in ensuring proper adherence to security and privacy considerations included in W3C Recommendations. It also helps to support broad participation, testing, and audit from the security community to keep users safe and the web’s security model intact.

In the coming days, the W3C Director will send the W3C Membership a Call for Review for the Encrypted Media Extensions Proposed Recommendation; and solicit feedback and expression of interest for the specification and the W3C Security Disclosures Best Practices Team Submission.

You may read more in the January 2017 Information about W3C Guidelines for Vulnerability Disclosure Programs and in the article on EME in HTML5 published this week by W3C Director’s Tim Berners-Lee.

W3C updates its Process Document

1 March 2017

W3C Membership approved the 1 March 2017 W3C Process Document, which becomes in effect today. Notable major changes of the 2017 update include:

• A process for marking a Recommendation as Obsolete (distinct from Rescinding a Recommendation);
• Voting mechanism used for AB and TAG elections is Single Transferable Vote;
• Clarified the process for continuing work on a specification initially developed under another charter (aka Supergroups).

You may read more in the W3C Blog post “What’s new in the W3C Process 2017?“. This document was developed between the W3C Advisory Board and the public Revising W3C Process Community Group.