[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XML Data Modellling/Linking (was RE: AfterXQuery,
On Sat, 2004-10-23 at 07:06, Eric van der Vlist wrote: > > To do to XML what the relational model has done to CODASYL, I think that > we need not only a query language but also to break tree fragments into > atoms that are easier to manipulate, query and recompose and earlier, Michael Kay said.. <quote> I have no answers to bring to the table, only a strong feeling that there is a piece of the jigsaw that is still missing. XML is a hierarchic data model but the world is a network. There are lots of possible ways to fill in the missing links [sic], but none of them feels very satisfactory (for example, many of them only work for intra-document relationships). I'm not even comfortable that the hierarchic relationships should be special. Why can't we have multiple hierarchic views of the same network? Why do all my queries have to change depending on whether my footnotes are inline, out-of-line referenced by IDREFs, or in external documents referenced by URI? What happened to the old doctrine of data independence?</quote> This issue of the single root has arisen here and elsewhere so many times, I can't recall any long threads picking it up. Liam mentions discussions at the Extreme conference. It seems to be of interest, yet the step from XML 1.0 to some definition that would allow a network seems to be impossibly large, or unaddressed. Re the links, if inline markup is unsatisfactory, how about the extra-instance ideas from extreme, would they more appropriately address the links issue? E.g. for the document world, I write my source documents, specifying only targets, then write another link document, specifying the links I want to/from my source document, and the properties of those links. Then link the source document and link document somehow. That way I can have multiple suites of links to any source document or document suite. -- Regards DaveP. XSLT&Docbook FAQ http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl
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