Re: Dreaming About Redesigning SQL

In an attempt to throw the authorities off his trail,
sailesh@cs.berkeley.edu (Sailesh Krishnamurthy) transmitted:
>>>>>> "Josh" == Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
> This is an unfair characterization of XML databases, and I can say
> this without accusations of bias for I vastly prefer working with
> the relational model.
>
>     Josh> Actually, amusingly enough, there is a body of theory
>     Josh> backing XML databases, but it's not one any current devloper
>     Josh> would want to admit to: the XML database is functionally
>     Josh> identical to the Network Databases of the 1960's.  Of
>     Josh> course, Network Databases gave way, historically, to
>     Josh> Relational for good reason.
>
> If you look at the academic research work, there have been
> gazillions of recent papers on XML database technology. All the
> major database vendors (Oracle, IBM and Microsoft) are investing
> fairly heavily in core-engine XMLDB technology.

Ah, but do "papers" honestly indicate the emergence of some underlying
theoretical model for which fidelity could be evaluated?  

Or merely that academics are looking to write papers on whatever
topics can attract research funding?

Half the articles in SIGOS have been about pretend applications of
Java to operating systems; why does it seem likely that the "database
academics" are any less affected by this?

I haven't yet seen a coherent "XML theory" emerge from the chaos.

It's not too dissimilar from the "object chaos;" the only works I am
aware of that try hard to provide theory behind "object orientedness"
are _A Theory of Objects_ by Abadi and Cardelli, and Benjamin Pierce's
book, _Types and Programming Languages_.  After twenty-odd years of
object oriented programming, I find it quite appalling that there is
as little theoretical OO literature as there is.

> Finally, while it is true that some of XML db technology is
> evocative of network databases, XML databases are certainly more
> than network databases. For one, they are semi-structure .. in
> addition they present query language access to their data (although
> I'm not a big fan of XQuery).

CODASYL had a query system, albeit something that looked more like
assembly language than anything else...
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