I have couple of documents on which xdmp:node-replace() over certain elements doesnot work. There are some other set of documents which are almost similar to th
If you want to update in-memory nodes as if they were in the database by using similar function calls, there's a utility library that does that:
https://github.com/marklogic/commons/tree/master/memupdate
The main library also ships with MarkLogic Server under App Services:
appservices/utils/in-mem-update.xqy
Anything constructed within a query is an in-memory element. For example this XQuery yields an in-memory element:
<test/>
Some function calls also return in-memory elements: xdmp:unquote is an obvious example. Any node that doesn't come from the current database will be treated as an in-memory node.
This query yields a database element (if it exists), which could be modified using xdmp:node-replace:
doc('fubar')/test
This is a typical in-memory update error:
xdmp:node-replace(<x/>, <y/>)
With MarkLogic 6.0-1.1, the error code is XDMP-UPCONSTNODES.
If your working with in memory elements import the following module
import module namespace mem = "http://xqdev.com/in-mem-update" at "/MarkLogic/appservices/utils/in-mem-update.xqy";
Instead of using xdmp:node-replace you can use mem:node-replace(<x/>, <y/>)