Re: Resiliency To New Data Requirements

Marshall wrote:
> dawn wrote:
> >
> > Maybe a little, but the www is still a very large distributed database
> > of sorts.
>
> It totally isn't. What makes up a database? Structure, integrity,
> manipulation to start with. HTTP+HTML has *none* of those,
> let alone more advanced things we might consider part of
> a dbms.
>
>
> > It has structured data (in spite of what others might call
> > it),
>
> No it doesn't. It has markup. Markup is not structure; there is
> no schema. If HTML is structured data, then troff is structured
> data. No schema: no structure. The level of things you can
> do with HTML are: put this word in bold.
>
> There's no DML. There isn't even a query language. GET is
> not a query language. There are no integrity rules.
>
> HTTP+HTML doesn't even remotely qualify as a data
> management system. It's a distributed document retrieval
> system. They are not the same thing. I'm not even sure
> on what basis one could claim they were related.
>
>
> > persisted on secondary storage devices, accessed by people.
>
> If this is your definition, then 3x5 cards is data management.
>
>
> > There isn't a great query langauge, I'll grant.
>
> There isn't *any* query language. Retrieving a document by
> a key isn't a query language. It's a cheapo function call.
>
>
> > The requirements are not
> > identical to those of a DBMS, but the model for the data ought to be
> > taken seriously and moved forward accordingly.
>
> No, it shouldn't. There is no data model to take seriously.
> Efforts to retrofit one have been embarrassing. If we want
> to do data management, and we are studying HTML+HTTP,
> then we should consider it a negative example.
>
>
> Marshall

I totally agree. The www is no more a database than a newspaper is imo - its a publishing medium. Received on Wed Aug 16 2006 - 12:22:03 CEST