Re: native xml processing vs what Postgres and Oracle offer

paul c wrote:

>rpost wrote:
>...
>>
>> To which he replied: but a forum message is often a reply, and in that case,
>> a reply to a specific other message; this is not a presentation feature
>> but a basic structural property of his forum (and of USENET as well);
>
>For all we know, the OP's forum could be some idiosyncratic mutant, eg.,
>one-user-at-a-time and synchronous. I'd say it would be more useful to
>consider USENET. Regarding whatever a "basic structural property" is,
>to be more accurate, the basic structure of USENET is a message. As far
>as USENET is concerned, a message isn't complete when a user submits it,
>it is complete when some server has massaged the user message and
>introduced various "headers" to it. Those headers are the relevant
>"basic structural property" (attributes, to use Codd's lingo).

Yes.

>> not just of the implementation but at the functional requirement level.
>> You seemed to be flat-out denying this, which raised the question:
>> how would *you* model USENET or his forum?
>> ...
>
>I'm not denying any such thing. As far as how I would model USENET
>goes, first, I'd list my "functional requirements" and single out the
>ones that are expressible in terms of formal constraints, as well as
>apply the Information Principle and identify the attributes (properties
>if you like) that I wanted to record for each message, then form
>predicates and constraints that would admit whatever display
>presentation or presentations I desired.

Yes, and my specific question was: how would you deal with the requirement that messages can be replies to specific other messages, or do you deny that requirement?

>I doubt if after that, there would remain any pertinent reason, ie.,
>need, for the word "forum" other than as a label for the resulting
>application. Probably the constraints would have to counter various
>loopholes in the RFC's as well.

Perhaps, but I'm not interested in covering loopholes in RFCs, but in the basic question that the OP implied in my eyes, namely, how to model and work with the is-reply-to relationship between messages in a relational framework.

-- 
Reinier