[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Why XML Over the Relational Model?
The reason I tend to give for this is as follows: - Complex Data Structures. The data structure in your XML can more accurately represent so called "real world" structures. This is the same benefit you get from an OO DB over a relational database - Cost. This can be important for certain types of applications, e.g. open source/free applications. Although there are free relational databases (Postgresql, GNU Sql, and to some extent MySql), it would generally be overkill to distribute the whole postgresql package with your app. XML parser implementations are all (?) currently free (for certain values of "free"). - Future. It's currently not /really/ viable, but we hope that in the future we can display fragments of our database (or the whole thing) using XSL, either on the web or in print. - Lightweight. Most XML parsers are quite lightweight, whereas most DBMS's are not. Often this is outweighted by the indexing and searching speeds of DBMS's, but that's not always a priority. Anyway, as with all new tech, use the right tool for the job. Or use a combined approach. For example, I'm working on a timesheet application now that stores timesheets as XML, employee information in a relational database, and runs batch processes to import data from the XML into the database for reporting purposes. This gives us some advantages listed above, and makes for an interesting project! Matt. -- http://come.to/fastnet Perl on Win32, PerlScript, ASP, Database, XML GCS(GAT) d+ s:+ a-- C++ UL++>UL+++$ P++++$ E- W+++ N++ w--@$ O- M-- !V !PS !PE Y+ PGP- t+ 5 R tv+ X++ b+ DI++ D G-- e++ h--->z+++ R+++ xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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