RE: [xml-dev] XML Data Modellling/Linking (was RE: [xml-dev] AfterXQuery, are we done?)

> Your first message in this thread intimated you had ideas on how XML
> markup might  be added to 'style' (or otherwise process) such items to
> move towards the ideas of XLINK....

You and others seem to have misread my intent. 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?

Michael Kay