JXPath

JXPath - JXPath is a java api for traversing object graphs using an XPath like syntax. The collapse the notion of axis down to only ‘child’ which really becomes ‘anything I can traverse to from here’.

Our generalisations of Xpath go much further though and could achieve what JXPath does relatively easily with the appropriate axis definitions.

It makes an interesting point though that a path like language is a very useful tool for accessing parts of data structures in programs/scripts. This is how they’ve been used in relational databases in the past (ie. making pointer chasing less verbose), so why not use them to locate data in more general data sources.