From: Kimbro Staken Reply-To: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Re: A Design Question Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 01:49:39 -0700
I'd think it's be easier to just use one collection for all documents. Specify which category the item is in through data within the document rather then through a physical structure. This also makes it easy to have items in more then one category or to move things around. Basically, try to leverage the semi-structured nature of the database and XML to simplify the physical database design and avoid the need for joins.
You know that a collections of this kind may start with 1000 items, and end up with say 30,000 items. This means that items are added in random order as far as category name is concerned. So if this was a sample document:
<item category="computers">
...
</item>
how much do you think it is efficient to search for such documents among 30,000 of its kind? I mean how much are we making use of XML database this way? That look much like creating one table in a RDB, and start mining the items one by one adding the category name to each. Forgive my honesty, but I guess I prefer to use Oracle for that solution than Xindice!
Another alternative is to push the join concept into the client.
I don't think I get you straight here. What do you mean by that?
It sounds like you could get away with retrieving a category description with one read and then all documents in that category with a second. There's no real need to do that within the database since you're retrieving data in larger chunks.
How larger? If we have like 1000 items in one collection, isn't that large enough? Did I understand correctly? What difference would it make here for your solution?
You didn't mention what's wrong with creating physical separation between the categories, does it clutter the server in any way, or does it have something to do with caching the collections?...
Kimbro Staken XML Database Software, Consulting and Writing http://www.xmldatabases.org/
_________________________________________________________________
Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
