NYCPHP Meetup

[Elliotte Harold]

Kenneth Downs wrote:

> A sourceforge project does not a phenomenon make.  I guess when the 
> banks and airlines have our data in the XML files, and I don't mean a 
> few hybrid patchwork examples, I mean the hardcore permanent long-term 
> stuff as well as the transactional support for the reservations we're 
> making all day.  When that happens, we'll start picking the restaurants.
> 

I've never said native XML databases will replace the old-school apps 
like banking accounts that fit relational databases very well. What they 
will do is enable new applications that simply cannot be built on top of 
a relational database, applications like Safari (the book site, not the 
web browser):

http://safari.oreilly.com/

There are others, mostly in publishing because that's the first area 
where there's a large backlog of information and applications that 
relational database vendors have been unable to serve. However other 
companies will come online as they begin to realize they can manage all 
their data with these tools, not just the the 20% of it that fits neatly 
into rectangles. Expect to see more uptake in law firms, advertising, 
media, education, government, and other sectors that have large numbers 
of critical documents where order matters, duplication is a fact of 
life, and normalization is not just a bad idea out outright impossible.

The relational model is a very powerful model, but it achieves its power 
at the cost of restricting what it's possible to store. Other models are 
needed for other applications.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
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