Cart
[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]
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?
|
