RE: XML versus Relational Database

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

It is for any engineer who accepts the 
usual conditions from the usual suspects.
 
Object data is reasonably portable 
using XML.  Objects seldom are per se. 
Relational data is reasonably portable; 
stored procedures seldom are.  Being 
locked into a language somewhere along 
the way is what one expects.  On the 
other hand, MS innovations look promising 
for parts of that problem. At some 
point, one has to sit down and code 
in some language and we were marching 
lemming-like to the Sun hegemony over Java, so 
things may be better sooner rather than 
later vis a vis freedom to pick a 
language.

It is a non-issue to the extent that 
all of these models are supported in 
some fashion and the rest  
work as we are accustomed to.  I don't 
expect perfect interoperability ever 
for blind exchanges.

Data is portable.  Systems interoperate.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: K. Ari Krupnikov [mailto:ari@iln.net]

The problem with OR, as well as OO, databases is portability. SQL makes
it reasonable to attempt to migrate applications, and more importantly,
people from one platform to another. OR not only locks you into a
specific product, it also locks you into one (sometimes, two) client
languages, usually, C++ or Java.

XML support in the three leaders (current, not promised releases) looks
more like an afterthought. Sure, there are methods that would give you a
DOM or a SAX stream as a reply to an SQL query, but all they do is
replace the delimiters with angle brackets in text that comes out of the
DB (usually, '|' delimited) and then apply the usual parsers. Not very
efficient. Not very flexible - you are stuck with a DTD that is defined
(either explicitly by you or implicitly by the RDBMS) that is based on
your DB schema.

So to summarize, I don't think that RDBMSs have "hybridized to the point
that the XML vs Relational DB is a non-issue".