Re: Amazon's "Simple" Database

"David Cressey" <cressey73_at_verizon.net> wrote in message news:cwO9j.6035$qv1.2023_at_trndny01...

> The thing that makes XML attractive to some people is not that it would be
> a
> good basis on which to build a dtabase, but that it seems convenient for
> data exchange.

Is XML actually attractive to significant numbers of people? It seems to me that no one wants to admit they know little or nothing about it, but they keep hearing about it and fear they'll seem ignorant and out of touch if they don't claim to want to use it too. Being in with the in-crowd is what is attractive; as it always is.

I've got a couple of customers who have found out the hard way that parsing gargantuan XML documents can kill the biggest systems. Presented with the option of using schema-based transformation or switching to files of fixed-width fields they both opted to abandon XML entirely and are delighted with their new fixed-width field files. Bizarrely, one was using XML to move data between two machines running identical software.

Awareness of database theory is almost non-existent. Is it hard to believe that awareness of other technical subjects is equally dire, or worse?

Roy Received on Tue Dec 18 2007 - 13:12:15 CET