15. A method, comprising: employing at least a processor to execute code instructions stored in a computer-readable medium, the code instructions when executed by at least the processor effect the following acts: querying a hierarchical collection of nodes; and supplying functions to augment the querying, wherein the functions (a) provide at least one of filtering the hierarchical collection of nodes, re-shaping the hierarchical collection of nodes, sorting the hierarchical collection of nodes, and extending the hierarchical collection of nodes with content computed from one or more nodes in the hierarchical collection of nodes, and (b) include an extended sub-node predicate function, an advanced projection function, a computed node function, a node grouping function, a node summary function, and a result sorting function; and manipulating the hierarchical collection of nodes through operators that support functionality of supplied functions, wherein the operators comprise: an Only operator that returns only child nodes that meet predicate criteria in returned results to a query; an All operator that returns a selected sequence of nodes only if all child nodes in the sequence meet a predicate criteria; a Project operator specified about a node selection, the operator explicitly specifies which sub-nodes are to be returned by a query; a Compute operator that enables results of a computation to be determined via one or more other nodes and a node type determined by return value of an expression, the expression allows for nested computation and is user-defined; a GroupBy operator that defines a node sequence for a group; and a Sort operator that defines a sequence of nodes to sort.
15. A method, comprising: employing at least a processor to execute code instructions stored in a computer-readable medium, the code instructions when executed by at least the processor effect the following acts: querying a hierarchical collection of nodes; and supplying functions to augment the querying, wherein the functions (a) provide at least one of filtering the hierarchical collection of nodes, re-shaping the hierarchical collection of nodes, sorting the hierarchical collection of nodes, and extending the hierarchical collection of nodes with content computed from one or more nodes in the hierarchical collection of nodes, and (b) include an extended sub-node predicate function, an advanced projection function, a computed node function, a node grouping function, a node summary function, and a result sorting function; and manipulating the hierarchical collection of nodes through operators that support functionality of supplied functions, wherein the operators comprise: an Only operator that returns only child nodes that meet predicate criteria in returned results to a query; an All operator that returns a selected sequence of nodes only if all child nodes in the sequence meet a predicate criteria; a Project operator specified about a node selection, the operator explicitly specifies which sub-nodes are to be returned by a query; a Compute operator that enables results of a computation to be determined via one or more other nodes and a node type determined by return value of an expression, the expression allows for nested computation and is user-defined; a GroupBy operator that defines a node sequence for a group; and a Sort operator that defines a sequence of nodes to sort. 19. The method of claim 15 , the node grouping function allows a user or system to re-group nodes by a property or properties in an ancestor or descendant hierarchy of the nodes.