Re: Model question

> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 17:27:19 +0200 (MEST)
> From: "Edward C. Zimmermann" <edz@elmyra.bsn.com>
> 
>> What we're talking about is potential future mechanisms to give
>> users the flexibility they need to express their own applications'
>> needs.
> 
> Don't we have that now?

Nope -- that's why the ZIG added eSpec-Q.  (Or, rather, if we do have
it now then it's only _because_ the ZIG added eSpec-Q.)

> The user can select the record or partial elements therefrom and
> then load it into whatever applications they want.. be it an XML
> parser for Xpath or Blast or their word processor or an RDBMS or ..

This is a fine approach.  Provided that 450 record you want to
summarise into a single line aren't all 60Mb in size.  Which,
increasingly, they are, thanks TEI, EAD, SVG and all the rest.
Bandwidth is getting cheaper, for sure -- but it is not free, and
never will be; and for some people, it's still expensive.  Dial-up
connection are still _way_ more common than broadband in the UK.

If client-side processing were always a good enough answer, we
wouldn't need IR at all.  We'd just do an HTTP GET to fetch the entire
database, and handle the whole thing in the client.  That _can_ be the
right answer in some contexts; but we can't in this day and age build
a protocol on the assumption that it will always be OK.

> If I want to talk about singular search (search of a record) in a
> non-trivial manner then I probably start to think about the kinds of
> searches that make sense on these and then... One person calls out
> Xpath and the next..

Yes.  When we have a less eighty-column model for what data is, we
will surely also need a less eighty-column model for queries.

--> TOTALLY UNEDUCATED GUESS
It may be that this is why the XML Query stuff is so insanly complex
that no-one except Mark Needleman can understand it.  Since I can't
understand it, I can't say for sure.  That suggests they're making the
model the wrong way; but it still needs to be made.

 _/|_	 _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor  <mike@indexdata.com>  http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "The best programs are created by three people or less.
	 Big software teams guarantee disaster" -- Ted Nelson.

--
Listen to my wife's new CD of kids' music, _Child's Play_, at
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Received on Monday, 28 July 2003 11:44:11 UTC