Re: [xml-dev] storing XML files

[Tom Bradford <bradford@dbxmlgroup.com>]

Chris Parkerson wrote:
> 
> [putting on my technology bulletproof vest and marketing glasses]
> 
> Embrace and extend... sounds REALLY familiar ;->
> 
> At least we admit it's not XPath...
> 
> And we ARE talking technology... if I was talking marketing; I would let
> you call it XPath ;->

Ok, before this turns into an all out flame war...

None of the XML databases on the market can really claim that they
support standards (including dbXML) because there are no well
established standards evolving for XML databases.  The goal of the
XML:DB initiative is to start addressing these common issues between XML
Databases where their requirements don't fall within the charter of the
W3C...  Though the charter of the W3C seems to be organically spreading
into domains it had never originally been drafted, and has absolutely no
business, but that's a whole other rant.

The work that the W3C is doing, including XQuery, XPath, and XML Schemas
don't even come close to truly addressing the requirements of XML
databases, and so vendors are forced to do what is necessary to provide
the users with what they need.  Sometimes this is bastardizing XPath,
sometimes it's extending schemas to support indexing.  These are not bad
things, but are solutions being born out of necessity.  This is an
infant market.  There is no right way to do things, and so there is no
one vendor doing it right, much less doing it better.

Instead of complaining about how your competitor isn't 'truly'
compliant, when that label can't truly be achieved with the current
state of the art being released by the W3C, why not start participating
more actively in the XML:DB initiative instead of using the XML:DB
mailing lists (as you use XML-Dev) to plug your products?  This
challenge is not directed at any specific vendor, but to all.  It took
over a decade for relational databases to establish themselves, and even
longer for there to be any truly common/standard CLIs and query
languages.  We have the opportunity to accomplish these goals much more
rapidly, but it can only be done if we work together at it, instead of
trying to one-up each other.

-- 
Tom Bradford
The dbXML Project
Open Source Native XML Database
http://www.dbxml.org