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

RE: Caught napping!

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Caught napping!
• From: "Champion, Mike" <Mike.Champion@S...>
• Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 17:37:55 -0500

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Weinreb [mailto:dlw@e...]
> Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 5:13 PM
> To: rpbourret@r...
> Cc: xml-dev@l...
> Subject: Re:  Caught napping!
> 

> Yes, but it also sometimes makes sense to use one when you're living
> and breathing XML everywhere already anyway, and it's just easier to
> deal with everything as XML.

Yup. The whole point of an XML database is *convenience* for those who are
immersed in the XML scheme of things; if you're immersed with pure abstract
"data" you probably want an RDBMS; if you're immersed in programming
objects, you probably want an OODBMS.  Most of us are probably immersed in
all of the above, and have a job to figure out which is best <grin>

> All I mean is that XML documents, being documents, are convenient.
> You can read them into Emacs and gaze at them.  I could put one
> into this very email so easily:
> 
> <book>
>   <title>Data and Reality</title>
>   <author>William Kent</author>
> </book>

A more compelling example, if you don't mind my butting in, would be if you
wanted to exchange a list of various books by various authors, publishers,
etc.  A normalization of this into  authors, titles, publishers, etc. tables
would be far less intuitive to someone when opened up in emacs (if there
were a MIME type for tables!) or displayed in HTML than would  a simple
hierarchical presentation.   We're hard-wired to understand hierarchies, and
not hard-wired to do mental joins. More power to the smart people who CAN
see four tables and mentally join them into a booklist, but, ahem, good luck
selling that UI to Amazon!

• Prev by Date: Re: Caught napping!
• Next by Date: Re: Caught napping!
• Previous by thread: RE: Caught napping!
• Next by thread: SV: Caught napping!
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread