>> What does a distance=10 mean for some arbitrary element? How do we
>> view order or direction?

>I've built systems with proximity across elements.  Imagine this case:
><rec>
>  <author>C. J. Cherryh</author>
>  <title>Brother at Arms</title>
>  </rec>

>I'm looking to see if Cherryh wrote "Brother at Arms".  The search is:
>Author=cherryh prox/unit=element/distance=1 title="brother at arms"
>That means that the author must occur in the element immediately
>preceeding the title.


I agree with Ralph, and have done the same thing.  While we dont have a
notion of an element tree (ala XML) in CQL, I would say that notion of
different elements enclosing data is essential, and that you might wish
to expose their ordering as in the case above.

Which is not to say that I want an element tree, I dont think that's a
role that CQL should try to take.  It's also not to say that I think
that element proximity is important for everyone to implement or even
worry about ... the number of cases when it's actually useful is very
limited.  The only reason that it has come up in this discussion is
because of the use of CQL to search *syntax* rather than *semantics*.
(So I blame Mike and Matthew! :) )

Rob