What is XML for?

[Paul Prescod]

Tim Bray wrote:
> 
> 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

I'm completely lost and that worries me.

The data structures observed in XML are "annotated tree with second-class
links." This can be used to model "annotated directed graph" and even just
"annotated graph" if you pretend that the links are first-class.
"Annotated graphs" are the basic structures used by object databases. So
you seem to be saying that it would be really nice if there were
high-performance object databases. That seems to me to be exactly what
Dave and David are promoting. So who am I misunderstanding?

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

Don't you know that the smart bombs are so clever, they only kill 
bad people."
	- http://www.boingo.com/lyrics/WarAgain.html

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