Re: [xml-dev] Are Updates really needed in XQuery?

Joe English wrote:
> In the database were organized as a small collection
> of large documents instead of as a large collection of
> small documents, then updates at a finer grain than
> document level becomes more critical.
> 
> I wonder which is more common in practice?

At a purely anecdotal level, I've heard from native XML database vendors
that their customers often start out wanting to use a single large
document rather than many small documents. This is clearly related to
the impulse many people have to throw away their database and replace it
with a single XML document.

My guess is that anybody who starts out with a single large document and
then looks at performance issues will eventually end up with many small
documents.

-- Ron