Apache VXQuery will be a standards compliant XML Query processor implemented in Java. The focus is on the evaluation of queries on large amounts of XML data. Specifically the goal is to evaluate queries on large collections of relatively small XML documents. To achieve this queries will be evaluated on a cluster of shared nothing machines.
There are lots of large collections of relatively small documents like e.g. the EDGAR dataset or the OpenStreetMap dataset. However there are no XQuery processors available today that are capable of processing these datasets in parallel and making the contained information accessible.
Apache VXQuery is an effort undergoing incubation at The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), sponsored by the Apache XMLBeans PMC. Incubation is required of all newly accepted projects until a further review indicates that the infrastructure, communications, and decision making process have stabilized in a manner consistent with other successful ASF projects. While incubation status is not necessarily a reflection of the completeness or stability of the code, it does indicate that the project has yet to be fully endorsed by the ASF.