- From: <bugzilla@jessica.w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 11:24:47 +0000
- To: public-qt-comments@w3.org
https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=26958
Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> changed:
What |Removed |Added
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CC| |mike@saxonica.com
--- Comment #2 from Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> ---
Do we want to build a hierarchic database or a network database? A database
which holds maps that can contain other maps, but cannot contain references to
other maps is basically a hierarchic database, whereas one that can hold
references is a network database. An XML database is hierarchic too, and we get
around the problems by using implicit (primary-key/foreign-key) relationships
to represent the out-of-hierarchy relationships. Personally, from my background
in databases and modelling, I find the limitations of hierarchic models very
frustrating. A key aim in database work has always been "data independence"
(the phrase is in the title of my 1975 PhD thesis), which means independence
between the view of the data seen by query users from the arbitrary design
decisions made by database designers. XML databases (and hierarchic databases
generally) give very poor data independence, and I would hope we could do
better. Certainly, I would love it if we could conduct the debate at that
level, rather than nit-picking about exactly what we mean by "identity".
(Having said that, I'm really not sure that to achieve what I think is needed,
I would want to start from here. I'm afraid that the XML/JSON hybrid database
we seem to be heading towards is a dreadful mess, at least as bad as the
XML/relational or relational/object hybrid databases. Taking two reasonably
clean but very different data models and crunching them together is not
something, in my view, that in the past has ever produced a thing of beauty.)
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Received on Friday, 3 October 2014 11:24:48 UTC