Who said this man can't write good documentation! Very clear Norm! Thanks.

Thanks for fixing the comments, Norm. I only wanted to say that we've pretty successful in actually using a query to set up the forest/database etc, which would give enable you to provide an extra level of automation in the setup.

Looking at your definition of accounts:services() in accounts.xqy, I found that you use /t:accounts without defining it anywhere. I stripped it down into the simple module:

  xquery version "1.0-ml";
  declare namespace t="http://www.marklogic.com/ns/nwalsh/twitter/tweets";
  /t:account

and it works, I get the element. How?!

Never mind -- I see that it's a bit of a dumb question. After spending more time with it, I see that "/*", e.g. works by returning all the document-level elements in the database. It seems very powerful -- I just hadn't run across it in the documentation I've read so far.