In his most recent column Kurt Cagle explains the utility of XQuery for increased data abstraction and why XQuery is XPath plus some useful missing bits.

Uche Ogbuji's Agile Web column returns with an introduction to OpenSearch, an Atom-friendly format for describing and discovering search engines and query endpoints on the Web in a RESTful way.

In his most recent column Kurt Cagle explains the utility of XQuery for increased data abstraction and why XQuery is XPath plus some useful missing bits.

In the area of technical publishing, there are still challenges to be faced when creating large, complex documents using XML. This week Jim Elliott and Marc Loy provide an excellent introduction to XMLMind, an XML editing environment optimized for complex technical documents.

Kurt Cagle offers an interesting perspective on the future utility of XQuery as a server-side development language.

Jason Levitt describes the newly burgeoning field of web authentication APIs, including Yahoo's BBAuth and Google's AuthSub.

Ben Martin returns with another look at his fascinating system, libferris, which turns everything into a filesystem, that is, a hierarchical data store. This time Ben shows us how to use XQuery with libferris as a kind of universal data access language. Good stuff!

Kurt Cagle describes ROX Server, a RESTful system for building XForms from an XML Schema and some other bits.

Kyle Gabhart describes WS02's Data Services, a new feature in WS02 that allows for rapid creation of web services wrapping relational, Excel, CSV, and JNDI data sources quickly and easily.

Kurt Cagle introduces us to E4X, an XML library for JavaScript, and argues that XML and JSON are both indispensable parts of the web app developer's toolkit.

Jack Cox explains an approach to building XForms client applications that work in a disconnected environment.

Uche Ogbuji returns with a new Agile Web column to explain how to use jQuery to process XML in JavaScript web applications.

Brian Suda explains how to handle hCard, the vCard microformat embedded in HTML.

Web service orchestration is an important part of web services and service oriented architecture. Gimzewski and Fancellu argue that XQuery is especially well-suited as an implementation language for service orchestrator components.

XML Databases, coupled with the power of XQuery, offer a potentially paradigm-changing way of dealing with data. The Oracle Berkeley DB XML database provides a rich XQuery-based engine that can be manipulated via XQuery, opening up possibilities for any web developer.