> Yeah I've often pondered that, wondering if it would work. Representing > The World as one large XML document is a nice ideal if anyone ever > eliminates the performance issue. But someone would also have to add to > the toolset of a basic XML document. Being able to join data into > different trees like a symlink (maybe xinclude statements?) would be > vital. So would be the ability to join two XML trees that aren't really > related on an ad-hoc basis (the equivalent of SQL joins). XML systems > seem to be really lacking when you get into expressing relationships > between data. But then, I'm not an SGML or XML guru so maybe I just > don't know about an existing system. > > It's an interesting topic. I don't expect to make use of XML databases > any time in the next few years, but I do keep an eye on the state of the > art.
No, I think you have expressed the basic dilemma of data abstraction today. There are 2 paradigms, relational, and hierarchical (CODASYL was the old fashioned name for it). XML is hierarchical, and you can think of object graphs that way too (only they are graphs not trees like XML). The two paradigms just don't mix well. Data represented in a tree is hard to search efficiently. Relational systems on the other hand obviously have too much structure to model most knowledge of the real world. So we have awkward mappings between the two systems. Unless someone can think up a new data representation paradigm, we're stuck, and anyone that thinks XML will "take over all data representation" and its the end-all for data is just not clued in yet ;o). I've burned a LOT of hours on the whole problem, and got noplace really. > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
