jq seems to have more focus on the generator and pipe abstractions. In jq you say "foo | map(bar)"; foo and map(bar) are both generators, and bar refers to each element of foo as ".". Here you say "for $x in foo return bar"; foo and bar are both JSON objects, and bar refers to each element of foo as "$x", so the iteration is more explicit.

Likewise, compare "sum($element.response_time)" with "map(.response_time) | add" in jq. Processing in JSONiq goes inside to outside while jq goes left to right.

My first thought also - would be a good entry for a FAQ or blog post.

Jq is xpath, this looks to be xquery. In fact it specifically works as an xquery embed.

For one thing, modifying data I guess.

looks nothing like jq

  1. let $stats := collection("stats")
  2. for $access in $stats
  3. group by $url := $access.url
  4. return 
  5. {
  6.   "url": $url,
  7.   "avg": avg($access.response_time),
  8.   "hits": count($access)
  9. }