re: The many to many problem in XML,was the BSR - the Basic Semantic Register

[David RR Webber <Gnosis_@compuserve.com>]

Message text written by "William J. Kammerer"
>
I'm having a hard time discerning the problem Phil is alerting us to:
if you wanted to flatten out the structure, you could simply take each
level's key from the hierarchy and add it to the relational DB record.
In any case, I'd rather have the real world hierarchical relationship
shown in the XML data, taking advantage of what comes natural to XML
(i.e., Element Content and nesting), rather than some artificial flat
structure mimicking DBase comma-separated files.
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William,

I totally agree with this assessment.

Also - from the stance of XML Querying - the query engine
will serve up - and in future transformation systems will master -
re-formatting in whatever output or information model you care
to see.  

As you rightly point out - this is the power the XML delivers.

Yes - this does cost CPU on the inserting of the XML into the
datastore upfront - but the value is repaid on the accessing
thereafter.

Historically the RDBMS was the way to get around performance
issues - and ensure information integrity.

The trend is very clear for the traditional database products to
become native XML stores within the next five years.

Not that I'm biased of course - since my company can already
deliver on this - but the big guys are also on the same tracks.

DW.