Re: Xquery might have some things right

"Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> skrev i en meddelelse news:c23ic9$usb$1_at_news.netins.net...
> My current interests related to software application development and the
> tools employed for such are aimed in two primary directions -- databases
and
> distributed computing. XML plays in both of these categories. In
> discussions related to both topics, there is a lot of lashing out against
> XML as being a stupid approach to whatever it is it might be approaching.
> Marshall answered a recent post by indicating he is not a fan of XML, for
> example. I, too, have been know to state opinions about how it is not
> terribly important that persisted objects of any type (thought I'd toss in
> some OO terminology just to mess with a few of you) be human-readable in
> their persistent state. I don't have to be able to look directly at a CD
> and hear the music either.
>
> BUT, XML does have some things going for it, not the least of which is
that
> it is our best bet yet for freeing ourselves of SQL -- a language with
which
> I have a love-hate relationship, but which is ready for retirement, in my
> opinion. XQuery, the emerging standard where Microsoft seems to be
putting
> their money, is something I have referred to as a "dog-ugly language"
> (although many dogs are cute) but it has some significant advances over
SQL.
> I decided it was time to learn the language a bit more and foudn that it
> does employ a 2 valued logic (THANK GOODNESS!) as well as the obviously
> superior approach to nested data (multivalues) compared to the RDBMS's I
> have seen.
>
> Additionally, along with the data modeling related to a UI, one of the big
> areas ripe for database theorists to join web folks is data modeling as it
> relates to data searching. We think of search engines for semi-structured
> data (such as text documents on the web), but our applications have often
> been so restrictive in making users get their search criteria exactly
right
> for database searches that we are going to need to adjust to more of a
> google approach at some point. We need to look at how a user will find a
> person, for example, when they recall that the word "green" is somewhere
in
> that person's demographic data (was it their eyes or the street they live
on
> or city they are from or one of their children or the company for which
they
> work?) We tend to force users to know the attribute (at least the type)
> they are searching along with any partial or full values for that type. I
> suspect that XML will play a role in the area of database search engines.
>
> And ... XML is NOT based on relational data modeling theories (another
thank
> goodness from me ;-).
>
> There is one huge deficiency (OK, more than one, but one I'll point out)
> with XQuery compared to SQL -- XQuery is a read-only language at this
point,
> although update standards are being addressed.
>
> So, although XML is seen as an enemy "technology" to some database
> specialists and also to some distributed computing specialists, it is
> bringing with it some good news. [and, besides, for data exchange -- the
> best use of XML -- it was time to move on from comma-quote files anyway,
> right?]
>
> Are there XQuery fans on this list? --dawn
>
>
Well Dawn... reading the above, I seem to find two advantages of XML as compared to SQL.
1) it is our best bet yet for freeing ourselves of SQL. This is highly subjective. Where is the value? 2) XML is NOT based on relational data modeling theories. You really should mention the deficiencies of relational modeling.

All in all, quite an empty post for so much text.

/Peter Received on Fri Mar 05 2004 - 16:36:36 CET