Date: Nov. 18, 1998
Link: http://www.w3.org/TandS/QL/QL98/pp/xsl-wg-position.html
Source Author or Organization: XSL Working Group

Excerpted from "Introduction": "The Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) has facilities that could serve as a basis for an XML query language. The XSL working group believes that it would be constructive for the W3C to first look in-house for technologies that might seed a W3C-endorsed query language. It is important to the working group that the W3C strive to maximize the reuse of technology within the W3C."

"XSL is one of the in-house technologies that the W3C ought to examine. Where XSL and the query language provide the same functionality, it would be beneficial to do so through compatible technologies. The W3C might accomplish this by borrowing from and building on XSL's pattern matching and document transformation capabilities."

"It is the consensus of the XSL working group that the W3C should pursue an XML query language that is based on XSL's pattern and transformation facilities. The working group recommends that further development of these facilities remain within the XSL working group and that a coordination group take responsibility for coordinating query requirements with other working groups."

"The coordination group would either strive to ensure that a single query language meets the requirements of all working groups or that a common query model underlies all W3C query languages."