[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Is HTML structured or unstructured information?
I agree. The blobs, the texts, the otherwise NOTATIONs, are the challenge to search systems that mine. By releasing that code, IBM advances the practice. Markup, as the name alludes to, is not about normalization although from the computer's point of view, that is a good thing to achieve. Should one markup only to the advantage of the computer? It's an easy trap to fall into. From one point of view, it is about capturing the structure and meaningful names organically present. In our younger days when some of us talked about using markup for modeling, some thought it a means to create a model, others a means to capture one. Practically, XML doesn't care, but historically, I think the latter approach dominated until XML made markup a favorite among computer scientists. But..... if one tries to 'fix' an organically derived model, one may lose some of the meaning. So even as we proseletyze good practices for structuring, we come back to naming as the practice to cultivate because idioms are meaningful. Yes? No? len From: Peter Hunsberger [mailto:peter.hunsberger@g...] <snip/> > So while a relational database may be a rigorous > example for structure, I don't think that is what > the article cited is really about. If one is looking > for patterns, relationships, intentions, meaning, is > it easier to get that from a relational database or > from an XML instance? It depends, in my opinion, > on how predigested the content is, not the structure > although the structure is useful for finding an > answer where one already knows the question and > the structure. Questions are harder. It seems to me that since both relational DBs and XML allow "escape to BLOB"; either of them can have as much or little structure as one cares to enforce. IMO the largest difference is the larger body of best practices for building up good structure in relational DBs. Eg. normalization theory for XML is still relatively immature by comparison...
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