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On Sat, 2004-10-23 at 07:06, Eric van der Vlist wrote:
>
> To do to XML what the relational model has done to CODASYL, I think that
> we need not only a query language but also to break tree fragments into
> atoms that are easier to manipulate, query and recompose
and earlier, Michael Kay said..
<quote>
I have no answers to bring to the table, only a strong feeling that
there is a piece of the jigsaw that is
still missing.
XML is a hierarchic data model but the world is a network.
There are lots of possible ways to fill in the missing links [sic], but
none of them feels very satisfactory (for example, many of them only
work for intra-document relationships).
I'm not even comfortable that the hierarchic relationships should be
special. Why can't we have multiple hierarchic views of the same
network?
Why do all my queries have to change depending on whether my footnotes
are inline, out-of-line referenced by IDREFs, or in external documents
referenced by URI? What happened to the old doctrine of data
independence?</quote>
This issue of the single root has arisen here and elsewhere so many
times, I can't recall any long threads picking it up.
Liam mentions discussions at the Extreme conference.
It seems to be of interest, yet the step from XML 1.0 to some definition
that would allow a network seems to be impossibly large, or unaddressed.
Re the links, if inline markup is unsatisfactory, how about the
extra-instance ideas from extreme, would they more appropriately address
the links issue?
E.g. for the document world, I write my source documents, specifying
only targets, then write another link document, specifying the links I
want to/from my source document, and the properties of those links. Then
link the source document and link document somehow. That way I can have
multiple suites of links to any source document or document suite.
--
Regards DaveP.
XSLT&Docbook FAQ
http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl
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