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RE: Data-oriented XML [was: Scatter/gather pattern]

• To: 'Ronald Bourret' <rpbourret@r...>, Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@p...>
• Subject: RE: Data-oriented XML [was: Scatter/gather pattern]
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 08:21:32 -0600
• Cc: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@m...>, xml-dev@l...

I've found the rule of thumb differences to be 
pretty much what Sean describes (thanks Sean), 
but I don't consider them more than rules of 
thumb.  

The document-centric vs. data-centric 
debates are mostly political.   During the time 
that people were crushing 38784 style documents 
into relational databases, it was the simple 
structures of the relational system that were 
troublesome and several papers were published 
at that time on the subject.  Some document 
structures are harder than others, (eg, 
do sections contain chapters or chapters 
contain sections, are paragraphs numbered or 
simply boxes o text).  If one simply does a 
data-centric XML, a lot of it's utility goes 
away.   On the other hand, a relational export 
import based on simple value pairs is weaker.  
CSV is weaker than that, yet the data-centric 
world has prospered on CSV and we find that 
most customers prefer it.  Can't say why; 
probably because on the surface it is simpler.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Ronald Bourret [mailto:rpbourret@r...]
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 3:52 PM
To: Sean McGrath
Cc: Roger L. Costello; xml-dev@l...
Subject: Re:  Data-oriented XML [was: Scatter/gather pattern]


Sean McGrath wrote:
> Yes, this is data-oriented. The difference between data-oriented and
> doc-oriented is primarily (a) homogenous structure, (b) no recursion
> and (c) no mixed content.

Why no recursion? A bill of materials strikes me as classic
data-oriented XML and it's entirely recursive. (I don't think the
difficulty of querying recursive structures with SQL should make them
not be considered data-oriented.)

-- Ron

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