Re: Development Trends in Web and Oracle

"Hexathioorthooxalate" <ruler_at_removemetoemail.clara.co.uk> wrote in message news:1110643410.31095.0_at_iris.uk.clara.net... >
> Organisations have a growing requirement to store XML, like it or lump it.

I find that a very interesting rationale. Organisations like mine have a growing need to store word documents, paper, documents in XML,PDF, spreadsheet data, images,emails and so on. That doesn't mean that they have a requirement to store all of them in their native form in a rather expensive relational database.

In fact I bet if you asked 50 CFOs or CEOs - how much has your XML storage requirement gone up in the last 5 years they would have no clue. I don't believe that they should have a clue. What they should care about is what *information* do they need to handle and what is the most cost efficient and competitive way of doing this. In the case of the word documents I referred to above it isn't the format that is important

> Keep your head in the ground long enough and it will go away eh? I don't
> think so; XML is here, has been here for a while, and it is here to stay.

Of course its here to stay, it self describes data according to a published schema and so is an absolutely fantastic way to exchange data between systems. Its probably even better than EDI, though of course it hasn't gone through the same lifecycle. Once you have captured the data that you are interested in however why would you wish to store its description along with the data, except to waste space.

> Anyway, what do you suggest? You have a large client where all processes
> rely on XML and the data you have to use, persist, and manipulate is XML.
> What are you going to do? Store the XML in a file and extract meta-data?

why not. Nothing you have described so far would exclude that, you might choose to do all the work in a java applet or a .net dataset.

> Make the XML a flat table structure? Reject the data and rely on some O/R
> mapping tool? Or use an XML aware and capable database? Go on which one?

whichever one is relevant to the business need of the application of course. It might be the database, but equally well it might not be. Putting everything in XML is no more architecture or design than putting everything in a dbms.

> And we haven't even addressed that XML is offering the possibility of a
> true cross platform open long term data format. And it is simple.

yeah right. Must go now to grab one of the pigs flying past my window.

-- 
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.niall.litchfield.dial.pipex.com