RE: XML versus Relational Database ; future

["Vegt, Jan" <Jan.Vegt@softwareag.com>]

Len,

When talking about databases (persistent storage devices for static data)
and XML I think it's important to see where we're heading. Future
predictions are always easy of course (in the end we're all dead).

Let me quote Alan Kay (1984) on 'Computer Software' :
"Is the computer a car to be driven or an essay to be written? Most of the
confusion comes from trying to resolve the question at this level. The
protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or
like a language to be shaped and exploited. It is a medium that can
dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that
cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many
tools. It is the first meta-medium, and as such it has degrees of freedom
for representation and expression never before encountered and as yet barely
investigated. Even more important, it is fun, and therefore intrinsically
worth doing."

It is my belief that the web is our current incunabula of this meta-medium.
All this current e-bizz buzz is only the first ripple of something bigger,
more similar to what Gutenberg did to society.

What has this to do with XML? Technically it is XML all over. 
XML is a universal data-wrapper bridging the previous distant worlds of
dynamic  and static data.
Is their an impact for persistent storage devices (databases). I think so.

Jan

Disclaimer : my views are my own, not my employer's, unless proven
succesful.