[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: An inquiry into the nature of XML and how it orients our p

• From: Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@gmail.com>
• To: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
• Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:40:21 -0600

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 6:16 AM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
>
> What are the consequences of constructing XML documents
> as a collection of classes and subclasses, or as tabular rows
> and columns? Do we destroy the beauty of XML? Is the lens
> provided by XML distorted? XML orients our thought. In what ways?
>

As Olivier says, all data relationships fall into graphs: a data model
is a data model is a data model.  Doesn't mean the people doing it are
doing it in the optimal way for the problem domain at hand, but this
isn't a case of modelling XML vs modelling something else (OO or
relational, or whatever). The problem is how to optimize the graph
traversal for the given problem domain.  Sometimes that means thinking
in terms of objects, sometimes in terms of set relationships, but
ultimately those are short hand ways of talking about some best
practices for graph traversal. Now, if you do find a way to always get
the optimal graph traversal for any given problem domain you've
essentially solved all the problems of computer science.  IOW, there's
still lots of room for experimentation on what models work best in
what situations...

-- 
Peter Hunsberger

• References:
  • An inquiry into the nature of XML and how it orients our perceptionof information
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>