RE: XML versus Relational Database

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

Understood and while I like to have choices, 
I am watching one fairly important language 
effort derail because early in the development 
cycle, they chose to specify multiple bindings 
without really separating the syntax away from the 
abstract property definitions.  Multiple 
encodings are madness without that.  As a 
result, it is unlikely they will be able 
to write a spec to govern all of the 
quickly emerging and competitive language 
variants.  XML is no help here; it is a 
competitor which divides some and rallies 
other, but ultimately, as the Grovesters 
discovered, markup is inadequate for 
for standardization of systems if adequate 
for specifications of syntax-centric vocabularies.  

And so, of course, the prose is normative 
and the choice of means open to interpretation, 
thus, interoperability is elusive.

Linda's question could be answered with a 
laundry list, and perhaps that is what she 
wants.  I'd say that on top of that list, 
DOM support is item number 1.

What do you think of this article?

http://www.scottandrew.com/index.php/articles/dom_doit

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

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

From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan@reutershealth.com]

The features all XML systems (i.e. processors)
*must* support is very restrictive, and doesn't
at present even include GIs or element nesting.

*Should* support, well, who knows?  That's why
the Infoset doesn't pretend to be normative;
it's a library of names of features thought to
be generally useful.