A professor I took a databases course from in college was convinced XML was the next big thing, so he made us also learn the XQuery language [1], which does thi

A professor I took a databases course from in college was convinced XML was the next big thing, so he made us also learn the XQuery language [1], which does things in roughly the order you described. I don't remember the specifics, just that the acronym was something like "flower" and you started with your from clause and ended with what you would return. [1] https://www.w3schools.com/XML/xquery_flwor.asp https://www.w3schools.com/XML/xquery_flwor.asp