On Friday 23 July 2004 09:40, Martijn Tonies wrote:

Hi,

> > Since man+dog has now adopted XML, as log as all the systems read/write
> > XML,
> > life is a lot, lot easier, almost painless.
>
> Oh sure it helped. But it's not like there wasn't a standard before XML.
> Lot's of industries have their own standard (eg, the financiele world,
> banks and so on) that everybody could get a specification from...

And that was the main problem, they all had their own standard. Some times
'standards' would vary between industries of the same type. This meant
creating special interfaces for each 'import ot export', each with a
different protocol.

> XML isn't different from that - the format is the same, but what the data
> means is different for everyone... So the one thing that might have changed
> is the reader/write code... the actual meaning is still a
> per-company/industry specification.

Its the reader/writer code that used to take the time, now it can be done
without having to consider the format, just the content.

> > Whilst I am a strong beliver in 'systems' reading/writing XML, I am not
> > convinced that this is something a Database engine should do.
>
> XML was invented for data interchange, let it stay there...

I mostly agree, but, bringing it back on topic, I would personally find it
useful to read/write XML with stored procedures, but I can see a use for
'querying' a DB using XML technologies.

Phil

Phil