Meaningful XML
Another day, another code review. Today I came across a function that generates non-meaningful XML. This is something that at first glance feels like it has a nice structure to it, but there’s a better way. First, let take a…
Dave Cassel
Exceptional code
Today I was looking into some code that was running slower than it should, and I happened across this little tidbit: let $normal :=  try {   xs:int($value)  }  catch($e) {   $value  }…
TDD with XQuery
Today I had a complicated function to write. The framework we’re using for this project has unit testing built into it, so for the first time in a long time, I did the Test Driven Development approach: I wrote a…
Word query specification
While looking at the database configuration in MarkLogic Server, have you ever noticed the Word Query link on the left? (Click Configure -> Databases -> the name of one of your databases -> Word Query.) Ever wonder what it does?…
Sales training
This week I’m doing something completely different, and a bit outside my comfort zone — I’m in sales training. No, I’m not planning a career change. My company is sending everyone in the sales organization to this training, and as…
Unparsing a custom facet
In many search applications, when we show the results of a user’s search, we also want to display the search that was done by putting the query string into a text box, especially if the search is built up from…
A custom facet for the Search API
I recently got to teach the MarkLogic Essentials class for MarkLogic University. To illustrate custom facets, I implemented one on the fly with the class watching. No pressure. :) The good news is that it (almost) worked with the first…
Splitting data with Info Studio
Today we’ll play “Spot That Mistake”. This will probably be really easy for some but it threw me off for a bit. My goal I wanted to bring some data into MarkLogic Server just to give me something to work…
text(), fn:string() and fn:data()
I’m going to be teaching the MarkLogic University Basic XQuery class tomorrow, and as usually happens when I get to teach, I’ve learned something while reviewing the material. In this case, it’s the differences among text(), fn:string() and fn:data(). text()…
Expires headers in MarkLogic Server
A little while ago I ran YSlow, a Firefox plugin that evaluates how quickly a web page loads, against an Application Builder based app I’d written. YSlow gave my site a grade C, with an overall performance score of 71…