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I know next to nothing about relational calculus. What I do know is that I tried to use "native" XML storage products in non-trivial ways and they failed. Storing a document is one thing. E.g., thousands of XHTML pages. That's trivial. It's just a filesystem with some extra features. Storing a database of customers and orders isn't. The relational model allows data to be viewed in almost as many ways as is needed. XML is a single-view paradigm that requires non-trivial technology to transform data. By "non-trivial" I mean it takes excessive amounts of CPU and memory. I get emails from sales people all the time trying to convince me otherwise, so I understand Pascal's lack of tact. In most cases these emails come from those who have never stored 10 megs in a database and then have a user say "gee could you roll up the sales by category and month?" There are a lot of suckers out there, and not having to worry about database design issues is certainly appealing. Native XML databases are the new snake oil. ----- Original Message ----- From: <Mike.Champion@S...> To: <xml-dev@l...> Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 2:44 PM Subject: RE: Against the Grain: Pascal commentary about XML and databases Someone tried to bring the existence of an XML database product to his attention, and got the response "This is a nonsensical statement. I wish there was a more delicate way to respond to this, but unfortunately the only thing I can say is that you really don't understand data fundamentals and you missed the point of my article. People without a decent understanding of data fundamentals should not be in the database business." ... I keep hoping that there is some middle ground where the rigorous mathematics of the relational model and the pragmatic usability of XML can meet and inform one another. In private correspondence, Mr. Pascal assured me that a truly mathematical model of XML is impossible, but I'm keeping an open mind.
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