[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
I like what I see in TeraText, from their web site, but none of the
situations of which I am aware can afford to treat the data elements, or
XML data items, as text only. Every one of these applications has cause to
use relations between normal forms of the data elements, and to do advanced
indexing on various data types not just text, such as dates and date
ranges, numerical process results (averages, means, distributions, etc),
scientific enumerations and so on.
Gov't docs are often like that - they are heavily laden with text or prose,
but also have significant valuations in other data types including math
equations with all sorts of notation formats or other readings such as
pollution indexes from the EPA, or farm crop estimates vs. harvests by crop
by month by county by year, or rainfall vs. temperature over time for each
day by gps coordinate areas, etc. etc.
On top of which it seems typical to gov't paper processes that rule-based
activities or rule based processes prevail, are interdependent or subject
to relations of various levels of complexity ranging from simple to quite
complex, and are dynamic or subject to seemingly random changes, sometimes
quite frequent changes.
I can do rule based stuff like Prolog integration with a relational dbms,
but I know of no Prolog-XML development path, or other rule based XML path
that offers normal form relations.
Think Library of Congress, and then consider a researcher wanting to
correlate results across a variety of sciences, seeking both text and
mathematical results from all available statistical items (published
studies) as well as other results, such as a comparision / contrast of
leading researcher articles in text form, but only the relevant sections &
footnotes or references. For any given area of inquiry, over any time
frame, any areas of science, etc.etc.etc. Kind of a Trantor University
(Asimov) thing, I know, but as an end result my sense is that such is
doable, and integration into a larger knowledge base should be a factor in
every XML system out there, at least every gov't system, if you ask me.
In other words, the TeraText approach does not seem to support relations
between normal forms, and so seems to have a self imposed design limit that
I, personally, find short of desirable. It is not just about massive data
handling, but also about being able to do things with that data after it
has been captured and has existed for some time, things that support
requirements that are not yet known. In my opinion. Only normal forms and
relational theory or the relational model (RM) offer this capability, in my
opinion.
Thanks for your response.
At 03:21 PM 8/19/2003 -0400, Scott Parnell wrote:
>I'm not sure if this meets your definition of an "XML only solution", but
>you may want to take a look at what TeraText offers:
>http://www.teratext.com.au/index.html
>
>Regards,
>Scott
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <lbradshaw@dbex.com>
> >
> > Ummm, the situation presented is that an XML only solution set can provide
> > the needed functionality, response time, and other capabilities.
> >
> > No worries here that I can do this using a relational DBMS, normal forms,
> > etc. But doing it only using XML constructs, and tools specific to XML,
> > does not seem doable, reasonable, appropriate or supportable over time.
>
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an
>initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org>
>
>The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/
>
>To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription
>manager: <http://lists.xml.org/ob/adm.pl>
|
