JSONiq follows the W3C standard for FLWOR expressions. The following explanations, provided as an informal summary for convenience, are non-normative.

Figure 53. FLWORExpr

FLWOR expressions are probably the most powerful JSONiq construct and correspond to SQL's SELECT-FROM-WHERE statements, but they are more general and more flexible. In particular, clauses can almost appear in any order (apart that it must begin with a for or let clause, and end with a return clause).

Here is a bit of theory on how it works.

A clause binds values to some variables according to its own semantics, possibly several times. Each time, a tuple of variable bindings (mapping variable names to sequences) is passed on to the next clause.

This goes all the way down, until the return clause. The return clause is eventually evaluated for each tuple of variable bindings, resulting in a sequence of items for each tuple.

These sequences of items are concatenated, in the order of the incoming tuples, and the obtained sequence is returned by the FLWOR expression.

We are now giving practical examples with a hint on how it maps to SQL.