On
the other hand, we have been handling the problems
of
heterogeneity and transform well without XML or
XSLT
for quite some time now. It is expensive
and
one-off, but XML and XSLT only bring down
the
complexity of that. The need to negotiate,
analyse, plan, propose and resolve are still
the
expensive bits and it is still noisy. The problem
is
one mans metadata IS another mans data
and
the differences are what take up all the time
and
profit. You are glossing across that "semantically
equivalent" problem too easily. Technology is not
the
issue there. Locality is.
[Linda Grimaldi]
Agreed that the semantic problems do not go away; however, one can
argue that the data store should not complicate the semantic issue any
further by imposing its own semantic notions upon the data. A completely
"context free" database is perhaps not possible, but we can get
closer.