Re: [xml-dev] XQuery & Several records (instead of one xml-field)

[Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@redhat.com>]

Michael Kay wrote:
> My experience so far of these hybrid relational/xml systems is that your
> problem as a user is not a lack of functionality, but an excess. There are
> simply too many ways of doing the same thing, and they have too many
> irritating differences - different sets of functions, different rules for
> case independence, different conventions for escaping special characters -
> and different (unpredictably different) performance. I find it hard to
> believe that this ugly hybrid of SQL and XQuery represents the future of
> database technology. I find databases where everything is XML (or indeed
> where everything is tables) much easier to work with.
>   

That's what happened when an upstart company named Oracle decided to 
create a pure relational database, ditching the old hierarchical and 
network technologies entirely rather than providing SQL as an add-on. It 
could happen again.

Or perhaps all databases will simply become hybrid databases, offering 
multiple interfaces for the same data - an XML view, a relational view, 
etc. When working with XML and relational, of course, the XML view will 
be easier.

Regardless, it's not just XML and relational, but various feeds and 
files and many other kinds of data that need to be integrated in many, 
many systems. XQuery is really well designed for this kind of 
integration. So far, I don't know another language that is.

Jonathan