Re: native xml processing vs what Postgres and Oracle offer

David BL wrote:
...
> 3) the tree structure can be defined but isn't necessarily
> pertinent

Regarding "pertinent" some people may get a few laughs from the Scientific American article, now about ten years old, at:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=xml-and-the-second-genera

The first paragraph comes right out and advocates the Humpty-Dumpty school of design:

"Give people a few hints, and they can figure out the rest. They can look at this page, see some large type followed by blocks of small type and know that they are looking at the start of a magazine article. They can look at a list of groceries and see shopping instructions. They can look at some rows of numbers and understand the state of their bank account."

I'm not laughing at the authors, they sound like cheerful, earnest idiots who get to their "point" without much ado, eg., before describing their enhancement to HTML, they acknowledge that HTML is "superficial", and they aren't going to let that slow them down! But the Sci Am editors who let this bumpf ride could have been accomplices to the tailor in the "Emperor's New Clothes". I would have thought a serious proposal would discuss http, not html. Received on Thu Nov 20 2008 - 15:28:54 CET