What is XML for?

[Tim Bray]

At 03:27 PM 1/29/99 -0500, David Megginson wrote:
>In general, few high-speed, large-scale applications can afford
>repeated passes through serial text files (or even random access
>through reverse indices), so using XML (in the literal sense) for
>primary storage is impractical; there are, of course, exceptions --
>for example, small bits of XML can be stored as blobs in relational
>databases.

Well, I'm not sure.  Perhaps it's just because my perceptions were
formed by working on the 500-MB deeply recursive Oxford English
Dictionary text; but I think that a high-performance repository
that could accurately mimic the data structures observed in XML
would very useful in many (not all, obviously) applications.  I 
think I hear both Megginson and Winer expressing doubt on that 
front.  I'm surprised.  -Tim

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