Re: What is the logic of storing XML in a Database?

"Daniel" <danielaparker_at_gmail.com> writes:

> As it is, I don't think you fully understand the problems that are
> being solved by XML.

Are you sure you understood? I was not involved in the history and emergence of XML, so I also have no real idea, what XML was supposed to solve.

But the problems many people today *think* XML solves, are way behind the possibilities of any markup language or meta language!

XML may solve many *minor* issues with protocol formats, maybe with XML and a really good designed Schema most syntactic problems really vanishes.

But in communication syntax is a minor problem. The main problem is semantic.

And the problem of syntax is easy solved by many tools (there are parser generator around for ages -- so why do you think making up your own specialized parser is so much harder than to come up with a really good designed schema for a meta language... do you think it's so much easier to write your spec in some XML schema language than in EBNF).

XML is a sign of bad education and carelessness: People don't care to learn about more than one tool (only one language, XML for everything and so on).

> theoretically inclined had reflected on these problems and proposed
> something more elegent, but in the absence of that, we're left with
> the work of the XML people.

As I said: People don't care to learn. They ignore history (look at programming languages: they are degrading -- Forth, Scheme, Common Lisp, Smalltalk all are more flexible, more abstract, more powerful than todays mainstream languages; but people don't care to learn those old languages... because they are old and they don't want to learn so much different language; also, to get a little bit on-topic, look at databases: people don't want to learn all of relational theory, they want just to learn the current product at hand, only the easiest way so solve their current problem at hand).

There are plenty of alternatives to XML, you have just to open your eyes and learn (and maybe in one case or onother XML is really the right tool to use).

-- 
Stefan.