Re: [xml-dev] [main] SQL instead of XQuery

[noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com]

Dmitry Turin wrote:

> So there is no advantages of XQuery (let's make comparison 
> characteristic during all time, instead to agitate for only one 
technology).

I think you misunderstood my point.  The advantage I'm claiming for XML 
over relational as a model in this case is that not just the lists of 
customers (which indeed can be handled fine in relational), but also the 
XML document that is the template for all the individual insurance 
policies, as well as the XML documents that are the actual policies with 
just the pertinent paragraphs and data values for each customer all fit 
nicely into a single, unified XML data model.  The XQuery language deals 
with that model directly and can, for example, not only select the 
customers of interest, but populate result documents with the required 
paragraphs, in order, and mixed content including data values for each 
policy.  I'm not a SQL expert, but I have the strong impression that it's 
not as well tuned as XQuery for doing such data driven document 
manipulation.  By the way, the policy documents can also be stored in the 
same XML database as the customer list, so it's relatively easy to do a 
join in which you select all the policy documents containing XML tags with 
certain values that match the corresponding values in the customer list, 
for example. 

Noah

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
--------------------------------------








Dmitry Turin <dev3os@narod.ru>
02/13/2008 03:42 AM
Please respond to Dmitry Turin
 
        To:     xml-dev@lists.xml.org
        cc:     (bcc: Noah Mendelsohn/Cambridge/IBM)
        Subject:        [xml-dev] [main] SQL instead of XQuery


noah,

nuic> SQL is great for querying and updating it. ...
nuic> policy documents are encoded as some kind of smart template,
nuic> so that a join in a language like XQuery can automatically create 
the
nuic> policy documents tailored for each customer.

Join of language like SQL can create tailored documents too via Web 
Service, e.g.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa226553(SQL.80).aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa226534(SQL.80).aspx
So there is no advantages of XQuery (let's make comparison
characteristic during all time, instead to agitate for only one 
technology).

nuic> SQL and relational are cleaner (not to say
nuic> having decades of deployment and training investment)

You are saying, that SQL is cleaner than XQuery,
relational is cleaner than xml's specifications,
but no XML/XQuery require more time and investment, but SQL requires ??

nuic> firms store lists of customers in
nuic> relational (probably), but the contracts, legal decisions, etc. are 
all
nuic> documents.

  If documents have regularized form (i.e. satisfied to some template),
then they can be easy entered into rational engine
(and even automatically: slides #7-9 in http://sql50.euro.ru/sql5.11.1.ppt 
).
 If documents have not regularazed form, you will write separate
XQuery-request for each separate document ??
 So non advantage to store document in XML.

  SQL with my proposal can also read xml-documents from local
filesystem and remote Web-servers (slides #119).
  So non advantages of XQuery.

---

nuic> The point is that what makes XML so valuable is not just that it can 
do
nuic> documents, but that it can do these combined document/data 
applications.

Necessity to combine code and data into one script (like in Perl)
does not exist, right ?

nuic> It's the
nuic> combination of data and documents in a uniform model that's 
powerful.

I have read attentively your description of request, have imagined it
both in XQuery and SQL form, and have found, that both of forms are
equally powerfull [or not powerfull, depending of point of view :) ].



Dmitry Turin
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