The self Axis

• The self axis refers to the context node. It's sometimes useful when making relative links.

• For example,

  /self::node()

  selects the root node of the document (which is not the same as the root element of the document; that would be selected by /child::* or, in this example, /child::FAMILYTREE.)

• It can abbreviated by a single period.

• This axis is rarely used in XPointers. It's more useful for XSLT select expressions.