9. The computer system of claim 7 , wherein the encoding of the first encoded nested document and the second encoded nested document is at least one of HTML and Base64.
7. A computer system to query a compound XML document, the computer system comprising: a processing unit to execute a program to query the compound XML document; a data storage device comprising a program to interpret a single query statement against the compound XML document; and a user interface to input elements of the single query statement and present return results; wherein the compound XML document comprises a primary XML document and a first encoded nested document and a second encoded nested document, wherein the elements of the single query statement comprise at least one respective attribute, respective encoding information, a respective search term, and a respective root node for each of the first and second encoded nested documents, wherein the processing unit acts to execute the single query statement and decode the first encoded nested document and the second encoded nested document such that the at least one attribute is returned from both the first encoded nested document and the second encoded nested document, and wherein the elements of the single query statement are concatenated together to form the single query statement wherein the processing unit acts to execute the single query statement such that the at least one attribute is returned from both the first nested document and second nested document by using the encoding information to decode the first and second nested documents in order to expose contents of each before assessing the at least one attribute.