[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
Before we pull to hard to the RESTstop, one thing. This
quote from Michael Kay's article prompted:
"I hope I've encouraged you in this article to recognize in particular that
XML databases are not just a direct replacement for relational databases.
They fulfill a different role in the architecture, and they work well when
supporting an application designed around the notion of data on the move
rather than data in the warehouse."
Strictly speaking, in a workflow app that is moving documents
from node to node, this is true because documents are the
predigested bits of beef where the formal act of negotiating
the negotiating instruments is done. (Lou Burnard: "A DTD is
a theory about a document") On the other hand, when doing
analytics, warehousing is a good idea because the whole point
is to theorize on the data. That is why business intelligence
systems (see Cognos, XML for Analysis, etc.) emphasize ad hoc
querying, hypercubes (mapping into a predigested theory of
theories) are emphasized. The network wants as little semantic
as it can handle to do it's job. The data analyst wants to
create semantics or prove them (see pragmatics) and the
marketing exec wants to appear as if they are cooperating
but in serving the stockholder/stakeholder values, want
to find ways to confuse the other guy's theories (see
combative pragmatics).
Thus, economies are NEVER frictionless. They thrive on it
because it keeps the spice in motion instead of settling
in a sub-optimum valley (noise in service of annealing).
len
|
