Re: native xml processing vs what Postgres and Oracle offer
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:30:46 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <ggj506$ifq$1_at_mud.stack.nl>
patrick61z_at_yahoo.com wrote:
>I remember an interesting read a while ago by a threaded newsreader
>author and the bottom line is the author first worked with the "in
>reference to" part of the headers (References:) and then the subject
>line and posting time, just due to the fact that there were so many
>newsreaders that just one method wasn't going to cut it. While in
>theory, using the references header you could rebuild the tree (as the
>references would accumulate using the replied to articles list of
>references), in practice usenet is subjected to any number of news
>clients some being better than others.
Good point; however, there is a specification (NNTP, RFC 977 and 1036) of the protocol, which implicitly contains a 'physical design' of the data structures used, in the form of requirements on message headers. The misbehaving newsreaders are *broken*.
From a relational perspective, the protocol spec should indeed have been preceded by a separate logical design. In the NNTP design, the decision was made to postulate the unique identifiability of messages regardless of their contents or other attributes; the alternative (which most here generally advocate) is to identify entities based on their attributes.