The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML Query Working Group was chartered in September 1999 to develop a query language for XML documents. The goal of the XML Query Working Group is to produce a formal data model for XML documents with Namespaces based on the XML Infoset and XML Schemas, a set of query operators on that data model, and then an XQuery language with a concrete canonical syntax based on the proposed operators. Work on XPath 2.0 which is a subset of XQuery 1.0 is being done in co-operation of the W3C XSL WG.

In May 2002 the XML Query WG and XSL WGs published a complete new set of XQuery 1.0/XPath 2.0/XSLT 2.0 documents. At that time Last Call Working drafts were published for the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators and XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model specifications.

This talk will provide an update on the current status of the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0. The talk will also outline the relationship of the work of the XML Query WG to other W3C XML standards especially XML Schema. The talk will also give the status of the WG's efforts to add support to XQuery for full-text retrieval and an update language.