Gannholm Torbj�rn wrote:
> Which terrible consequences can you foresee? In what way is an xml-database
> not like a big document?

For the same reason you wouldn't want to perform XSLT against a query
like:

SELECT * FROM someTable FOR XML AUTO, ELEMENTS

Repeatedly issued against a table with a few million rows.  While the
result would be represented as a single monster document, the effect
would essentially result in a table scan every time.

You might be able to get away with something like that in a persistent
DOM, because usually the underlying object databases are designed to be
that granular, but with databases like dbXML and Tamino, the decision
was made to approach the problem from a more traditional standpoint,
where every document is an atom, mainly for scalability and performance
reasons.

> Yes, xslt was designed as a transformation language to create new documents.
> However this is not the first time in the history of the world that one can
> find a new use for an existing tool. Even xml has turned out to be more
> useful than was first imagined when creation of it was started.
> Xslt is in fact just as powerful as a general programming language.
> I am saying that there is a difference between xslt and xupdate, but the
> difference need only be in where the result nodes are placed.

Thing is, in XSLT, every node is a result node, because the processor
regraphs everything.  The model is a pipeline because of the language's
original goals.  In XUpdate, only modified nodes are new, allowing only
differences to be applied to existing graphs.  Different model, for a
different purpose.  

-- 
Tom Bradford  The dbXML Group, L.L.C.  http://www.dbxmlgroup.com/
Desktop, Laptop, Settop, Palmtop.  Can your XML database do that?
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