[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: XML Database Decision Tree?
> -----Original Message----- > From: Ronald Bourret [mailto:rpbourret@r...] > Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 5:01 AM > To: Dan Weinreb > Cc: xml-dev@l... > Subject: Re: XML Database Decision Tree? > > [XML DBMS people] then get this faraway look in their eyes and hint that, should > their database outperform an RDBMS on certain transactional data, and > should people decide to use their native XML database as the > database of record, well, then, they're not about to dissuade them. > > A number of the native XML database people I > have talked to view their database more as middleware -- that is, part > of the application -- than as the database of record. This is > certainly the case in application integration scenarios. [Getting a faraway look in my eyes ...] Remember, that the "native XML DBMS" meme has only been in circulation outside a few places (notably Darmstadt, Germany, the home of both Software AG and GMD-IPSI ) for about two years now. Will it end up like the OODBMS meme, subsumed into "post-relational" DBMS technology? Or will it end up more like HTTP, which hit the sweet spot between functionality and simplicity and brought us all to the (virtual) table we are all sitting around? The "XML DBMS" idea is not driven by marketing people any more than OODBMS or HTTP was; like most successful memes, it's a solution looking for a problem, and so far I've been quite impressed with the number of problems it latches onto. Will it survive and prosper? Only Father Darwin knows :~) [speaking ONLY for myself] I see a a couple of possible scenarios. One, of course, is that Oracle and MS embrace and extend the idea then bottle up its originators in specialized niches... sortof what humans did to the rest of the apes over the last 100,000 years, speaking of Darwin. Another scenario is that XML DBMS hit the sweet spot between the full generality/complexity of the relational model, does to them what PCs did to mainframes or RDBMS did to IMS, etc., and become the default solution for everyday problems, even though the previous generation still lurks behind the scenes everywhere. XML DBMSs *are* solutions for all sorts of interesting problems, especially in a world where XML is the "lingua franca" of electronic commerce. You *can* normalize XML purchase orders that come in from SOAP, Web pages, etc. into 20-30 RDBMS tables, with the help of an army of programmers and DBAs to cope with diversity and evolution... or you can do this much more simply with an XML DBMS. I kindof like this scenario myself, although I think the co-existence with RDBMS will be much more as equals in mindshare rather than the XML DBMS's being seen as "winnint." RDBMS will probably remain the databases of record (Thanks for introducing that term into this discussion, Ron!) for information-centric data that needs to be viewed in many ways, joined with other data in un-forseeable ways ... whereas XML DBMS will support the databases of record for document-centric data that is optimized for limited, human-oriented purposes. Or perhaps we're in the early stages of a "Copernican Revolution" where the old guard are adding more and more "epicycles and deferents" (e.g. "native XML SQL types") to the classic model to accomodate new realities, the new guard have an elegant idea but can't quite nail it down mathematically ... and sooner or later Newton comes along to tie it all together in one conceptually simple yet mathematically rigorous package. Of course, the RDBMS zealots think that Codd is "Newton" and we simply haven't recognized that yet ... we shall see! I personally don't think so; he's more like Kepler, who got clean results by assuming away the messes his math can't handle ... like ordering and containment in the case of database theory. Any nominations for half-crazed geniuses who can solve this problem?
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