Re: Resiliency To New Data Requirements

From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 04:13:55 GMT
Message-ID: <72SEg.49402$pu3.584080@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>

Keith H Duggar wrote:

> Marshall wrote:
>

>>dawn wrote:
>>
>>>Your definition of "database" is not the norm, it seems,
>>>but I went to the cdt glossary and found this
>>>
>>>Database : A logically coherent collection of related
>>>real-world data assembled for a specific purpose.
>>>
>>>I think the web fits within these definitions.

>
>
> The web is a fragile incoherent distributed mass of
> unrelated data with no specific purpose. So obviously it
> fails on almost all counts.
>
>

>>>You see no structure in the marked-up data?
>>
>>Again, we may stretch the definition of structure until
>>it can encompass this kind of usage, but doing so is
>>counterproductive and not on-topic if we are discussing
>>database theory.

>
>
> It probably is off-topic, however, for general usage I'm
> forced to partly agree with Dawn that the various *ML's do
> have semi-structure. I think almost anyone would understand
> what you meant to communicate if you said something like
> "plain text is unstructured, relational data is structured,
> and the stuff in between like HTML is semi-structured". Sure
> the semi-structure sucks in major ways but the word semi-
> structured communicates the concept just fine.
>
> -- Keith -- Fraud 6

I tend to disagree. The physical data structure of a web page is a sequential stream. HTML/XML/SGML provide means for creating "logical" hierarchies within sequential streams. Received on Wed Aug 16 2006 - 23:13:55 CDT