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RE: XML Database Decision Tree?

• From: "Champion, Mike" <Mike.Champion@S...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 12:55:19 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Magick, Brian [mailto:Brian.Magick@C...]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 10:52 AM
> To: xml-dev@l...
> Subject: RE:  XML Database Decision Tree?
> 


The responses in this thread have clarified/corrected one point for me:  You
can do a "bad" table-based data model (one table with lots columns full of
mostly null values) of almost anything in Access or whatever as easily as
you can do a naive XML data model.  I have a gut feeling that the typical
developer can do a decent data model in XML more easily than he/she could do
a decent normalized RDBMS model, but that's one for the Time Will Tell file.

 
> Now this isn't a new struggle.  Data Architecture historically has had
> an uphill battle for acceptance, I won't get into the 
> specifics of that

I'd appreciate some pointers to resources on "Data Architecture" and its
principles as it relates to XML.  It sounds like a discipline that we need,
e.g. to address the question of when to model hierarchically and when to
model relationally.  

> In terms of the XML database I think the term database might be bit
> misleading (I personally think repository fits better) 

Hmmm ... I'd say that "repository" implies persistent storage and retrieval
by some primary key, some predefined metadata, and maybe brute force search
("grep").    "DBMS" implies that plus more flexible yet efficient queries,
transactions, integrity enforcement (whatever that means in XML!),
backup/restore utilities, optimization tools ...  By that definition, a
vanilla WebDAV server is a "repository" whereas the products from the
vendors who have participated in this thread are "DBMS".  That seems like a
distinction worth making.

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