Does Adobe recommend XPath query over SQL2 Queries ? If so why ?

[VeenaVikraman]

Hi All

     Recently I happened to attend an interview where, along with lot other architectural questions, I was asked which query is best ? . AFAIK , there is not much difference between them performance wise, as at the end everything get compiled and converted to SQL2. When I gave this answer the interviewer said "Adobe recommends XPath. why?" . I am not sure. I went and checked the documentation for query builder and I can see (recommended) against XPATH. I searched the forum and got this https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-experience-manager/xpath-or-sql2/qaq-p/279447 . But then here @Jörg_Hoh clearly mentions that XPath is deprecated , but still supported by OAK. I am bit confused . Can someone guide me ? 

Thanks

Veena

[Jörg_Hoh · Accepted solution]

I don't think that there is clear recommendation which query language to use. In the end the they are executed both within the same query engine, and the result and the performance are the same. Also Adobe-internally I can say that we use both query languages without really being in favor of any.

Historically there's been a favor of xpath (I don't know the reason why), and xpath has been deprecated during the standardization of JCR2 (as not only Day Software was involved, but also other companies which were favoring SQL/SQL-2). But xpath support has never been removed from Jackrabbit and Oak, and it's still fully supported.

So regarding your interview question, I think that statement of the interviewer was not really correct.

[VeenaVikraman]

Thanks a lot Jorg.. Helps a lot