An important part of every ESB is transformation. Most ESB's use an XML representation internally. Non-XML messages are first converted to an XML representation and vice-versa. The conversion between non-XML and XML representations can become a challenge (and transformation) in itself.
The main transformation logic in (most) ESB's thus becomes XML-2-XML. Most ESB's use XLST for transformation (BizTalk, IBM ESB, Tibco BW, Oracle SOA, ...). And most commercial integration tools still use XSLT 1.0.
But there is another XML standard technology that can be used for transformations: XQuery. The only 'big' player in the integration world supporting XQuery is BEA AquaLogic. Obviously, the ESB's such as Mule or WSO2 ESB provide XQuery support as wll.
Regardless of the big discussions on XSLT vs. XQuery, I think XQuery would be a very welcome addition in the toolset of integration developers. Adding an XQuery transformation component in the palette of building blocks can't be that hard.
The IDE support for XQuery is obviously more complex. Development of XML assets such as XML Schema's and XSLT transformation is better supported in 3rd party XML tools anyway.
PS: haven't used it yet, but the XQuery support in StylusStudio looks as good as their XSLT support
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