Re: O'Reilly interview with Date

Marshall Spight wrote:

>
> "Semi-structured" data refers to data in a context where some
> of the structure of the data is visible to the application, and
> some is not.
>
> For example, if you have a network packet with a header and a
> payload, you might have an application that knows the schema
> of the header but not the payload, and uses data in the header
> to choose an encryption method for the payload. The application
> treats the payload as an opaque stream of bytes, hence it is
> "unstructured" to that application. Of course, the structure
> is still there, and some other application down the line will
> know what the schema for it is. Clearly, if *no* application
> knew the schema, it would just be noise and not data.
>

This makes the RM semi-structured :)

To the RM, a table is semi-structured because an item of type char(20) is handled as payload, an opaque stream of bytes. The type engine provides services such as comparisons, but the Relational engine doesn't care.

-- 
Kenneth Downs
Secure Data Software, Inc.
(Ken)nneth_at_(Sec)ure(Dat)a(.com)