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RE: Hypertext and complexity (was RE: XML, hypertext

• To: 'Mike Champion' <mc@x...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Hypertext and complexity (was RE: XML, hypertext)
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 13:39:35 -0500

Because it is a big leap, conceptually and functionally, 
to say a link means "get me this file" to "send this 
abstract name for an abstract resource to an unknown but 
addressable proxy for that abstraction, and tell it that 
what ever it means by that, keep it handy because I am 
going to use that meaning in some meaningful way locally" 
and that is as much as one can say by specification.

A semi-normalized relational database may be weaker than a fully 
normalized one, but it has a consistent and fully spec'd 
data model that makes addressing rational and reasonable.  
That is why ASP/IIS/relational db of choice with ODBC 
is still the dominant lifeform in this ecosphere.  As 
XML specs have been produced to enable the XML representation 
plus whatever data model is trendy to act as a proxy 
to that, or in lieu of that, things have gotten complicated.

It's one thing to use a document as a serialized view of 
the contents of a database.  It is very big leap to use 
it AS the database.  Why did we need namespaces to begin 
with?  Aggregates.  Why do we need aggregates?  Is it 
because of the final rendering or because of the source 
of each piece and where it originates?  Is that origin 
in a different namespace (syntax collisions) or a 
different semantic space (needs a different handler)? 

The political complexities don't interest me a lot 
except insofar as telling me how long it will take 
the 1.25 available solutions to get sorted out.  
The Hytime/DSSSL group could get to the bottom or 
top of the conceptual ladder because they were a 
small group talking among themselves mostly.  Dragging 
the whole world wide weird and wonderful down that 
path so that consensus emerges of common true 
understanding takes a lot longer.   That at the 
end, the solution will look a lot like what the 
first group came up with, names changed, history 
cheerfully revised and all that, well that is 
the price of global consensus.

Walking on bones.... oh well... back to robbing 
tombs for gold to keep the economy moving. :-)

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Champion [mailto:mc@x...]

8/16/2002 10:32:03 AM, "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...> wrote:

>
>For those who are understandably irritated by the increasing 
>complexity of XML specifications, note where things start 
>to become complex in each as one attempts to make a global 
>network of resources *behave* as if it were a semi-normalized 
>database.  Hypertext/hypermedia is an old old form of 
>a database, and it isn't simple to take any abstract 
>resource anywhere anytime with n representations per 
>resource and make it accessible with the same kinds 
>of unified views afforded by modern relational or 
>even neo-modern object-oriented systems.  Trying to 
>do that has resulted in much of the noted complexity.

You wouldn't want to elaborate on that, would you?  It's
intriguing, but I don't completely follow.

The increasing complexity of XML comes, as far as I can
tell, with taking an SGML subset and adding namespaces,
integration with "the Web" (e.g. the URI debacle), 
integration with strongly typed and/or OO programming
languages (e.g., WXS), and the attempt to reconcile all
of the above with the vision of the semantic web. I definitely
see problems treating all this as if it were a normalized
database, but I don't see the attempt to treat it as a
"database" driving the complexity.    If anything, in my
humble and biased opinion, thinking of the XML/XTHTML
Web as a "database" would impose a useful discipline and
motivate people to whack off a lot of complexity.

There's a certain amount of self-inflicted complexity e.g. the
obvious political compromises one sees in WXS and DOM, and
the incompatibilities between the DOM and XPath data models.
That's just reality in a consortium of competitors in a rapidly
changing world, and will be sorted out someday, probably by fiat.
Again, I don't see this as having much to do with "semi-
normalized databases."

What am I missing?

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