RE: [xml-dev] storing XML files

["Champion, Mike" <Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ronald Bourret [mailto:rpbourret@rpbourret.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 12, 2001 4:46 PM
> To: Elliotte Rusty Harold
> Cc: xml-dev
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] storing XML files
> 
> 

> All native XML databases support mixed content and its companion,
> sibling order. What I was referring to was XML-enabled relational
> databases and middleware that use a (data-centric) object-relational
> mapping.
> 
> Except for XML-DBMS, these don't support mixed content or storing
> sibling order information in the database (AFAIK). This is for good
> reason -- data centric applications pretty much care about neither.

To be fair to my employer's esteemed RDBMS competitors, XML-enabled RDBMS
systems can always *store* mixed content and sibling-ordered information in
a BLOB or CLOB. Isn't the issue whether the stored XML can be *queried" in a
way that reflects the sibling ordering and mixed content?  

<rant marketing_hat="on">The Wrox Professional XML Databases book concludes
(after 5 pages of discussion) "it is probably becoming understandable why we
should avoid this content model for the representation of data - the
resulting relational structures are difficult to navigate and search." One
could just as easily turn this around and note that we should avoid
relational databases for storing XML data that exploits mixed
content!</rant>