Thinking about insurance? XQuery can help!

ACORD is a well-known organization focused on standards in the insurance industry. In the last several years ACORD has developed an impressive number of XML-based standards, and more and more organizations encounter these standards every year. It should be no surprise that a language like XQuery can be extremely helpful in creating, consuming, and processing ACORD messages; and XQuery processors able to access heterogeneous data sources, like DataDirect XQuery, provide an even more powerful way to process ACORD-based requests, to validate requests against a variety of sources, and to perform back-end updates based on changes communicated through ACORD messages.In order to illustrate the value brought to the table by DataDirect XQuery, we went through the exercise of creating XQuery that deal with specific ACORD requests in hypothetical (but reasonably realistic) scenarios. We recently published the results on our web site, at http://www.xquery.com/ACORD/.One of the major benefits of using DataDirect XQuery is that users are able to access and process multiple heterogeneous data sources in the context of a single language (XQuery) and data model. To prove that, we spent some time trying to imagine how tasks similar to the ones described in the XQuery examples would be solved in an environment where the developer is limited to the use of Java+SQL. We'll leave it to you to judge the difference in complexity between the XQuery and Java+SQL approaches.

Of course, insurance is just one of the many possible "industry verticals" that we could choose; time permitting, we will tackle other industries (health care and airlines are two that come to mind) focusing on different standards. If you have any specific suggestions, we are interested in hearing about them! Write and let us know.