This comes up every time we release specs. It's clear that the community 
wants updates, and it is clear that vendors will be implementing updates. 
It's even clear that vendors seem to be implementing very similar update 
languages, based on a common proposal.

Even though proposals exist, doing a thorough review and achieving 
consensus on an update proposal takes time, which would certainly delay 
XQuery 1.0, and I believe would almost certainly mean that XQuery 1.0 would 
not be released this year. (This is my opinion only, not an official 
Working Group statement).

In practice, we would have to review every part of the update proposal in 
detail, and changes would be made. I can't imagine this taking less than 6 
months. Since the charter for XQuery 1.0 does not require updates, I think 
it makes sense to do this in a separate time frame from the XQuery 1.0 spec 
itself. On the other hand, waiting another 2-3 years after XQuery 1.0 is 
released would be a very bad idea indeed.

Here some of the things we want to balance:

1. Releasing an update spec that is not thoroughly reviewed and implemented 
is bad, and would haunt us for a long time to come.
2. Letting one vendor define how updates are done for the entire industry 
is also bad, so having some kind of proposal in the public view is probably 
important.
3. The telcons and face to faces for XML Query are already chock full, 
there just isn't much room for discussing new features, we are too busy 
making sure what we already have is well defined.

Jonathan


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