Re: Where is the (tree-displayable) data?

On 3/24/06, Shelley Powers <shelleyp@burningbird.net> wrote:

> Hierarchical data. Anyone remember when relational databases were
> sparkly new, and the big database design of the time was hierarchical
> databases? Or some network databases, but hierarchical -- man that was
> the big thing. The reaction to relational databases at the time was a)
> they were too hard to understand and b) they were too esoteric--the
> brain child of academics.

UI! UI! UI!
I'm on about projecting trees from the graph in the interests of
low-surprise user interactions. I wouldn't really consider any
intermediate format so much as data, more as presentational markup.

> Danny, you know I'm teasing you (in case anyone wonders, I'm godmother
> to one of Danny's cats

Don't think that buys you any grace. I'm currently perched on an inch
of seat-edge, the rest being taken up by that there goddaughter of
yours (she grow'd!)

But I think I'd rather issue a reverse
> challenge -- demonstrate how you can't use OPML and RSS 2.0 to
> accomplish what you can with RDF. Barrels and fish come to mind, but
> there you go.

That could well prove quite a challenge, "can't" doesn't figure highly
in the software vocabulary. Typical application problems seem like
they can potentially be solved using virtually any arbitrary set of
tools/languages. The solution might be a Rube Goldberg construction,
but that's enough to demonstrate not-impossibility. But if you can
think of a good example, I'll gladly write up the compare/contrast.
(I'll also note that the silent data loss issue due to indeterminate
escaping in RSS 2.0 was generally brushed aside by its advocates. If
these folks can live with that...)

> See above: think squashing relational to hierarchy, throw in use of
> COBOL as compared to C++, Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby for good measure.

Final frontier? Anyone done an RDF API in COBOL yet? (Heh, I wouldn't
be surprised to find Redland had a binding for it, it seems to have
for everything else).

> > Feed "grazing" is a nice analogy - maybe the RDF processing/flattening
> > is "chewing the cud".
> >
> >
> We talked chewing cud once before. Ever looked deep into the eyes of a
> cow in the field chewing its cud? You wouldn't have any hesitation about
> eating beef afterwards.

;-)

> All of this reminds me of a song...what is it...what is it...
>
> Of course!
>
> http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/anything.htm

Heh, now that path really does lead to a lot of lost time.

Cheers,
Danny.

--

http://dannyayers.com

Received on Friday, 24 March 2006 17:27:22 UTC