xsdb better than RSS, RDF, XQuery, XPath, and XSLT most of the time ;)

[aaronwmail-usenet]

Hi folks,

Please have a look at my proof of concept data aggregation/publication
methodology

http://xsdb.sourceforge.net

From an XML perspective it is intended to be more appropriate

and simpler to use for common database-style uses than RSS, RDF,
XQuery, XPath, and XSLT.

I suspect readers of this list will have some thoughts about
it(constructive, I hope).

Thanks, -- Aaron Watters
Haunted by the ghost of Christmas presents.

Ps: I say "proof of concept" but I think the implementation may be
usable for non-huge problems.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Please have a look at my proof of concept data aggregation/publication
methodology

You need to understand what RDF and XQuery do before you waste any
more time. (You really had me worried when you posted this as
"Aaron" !)

Statements like "xsdb better than RSS," are guaranteed to get people's
backs up, especially when your goals statement already makes the (far
more reasonable) claim, "These formats are designed to "integrate a
variety of applications from library catalogs and world-wide
directories to syndication and aggregation of news, software, and
content to personal collections of music, photos, and events using XML
as an interchange syntax.""

And the triviality of your model theory caused a humurous
coffee/monitor interfacing issue (thanks for at least addressing the
question though).

 

[aaronwmail-usenet]

You need to understand what RDF and XQuery do before you waste any
more time. (You really had me worried when you posted this as
"Aaron" !)

Please explain. This comment is not helpful.

Statements like "xsdb better than RSS," are guaranteed to get people's
backs up, especially when your goals statement already makes the (far
more reasonable) claim, "These formats are designed to "integrate a
variety of applications from library catalogs and world-wide
directories to syndication and aggregation of news, software, and
content to personal collections of music, photos, and events using XML
as an interchange syntax.""

I was deliberatively inflammatory in the hopes of provoking
discussion. Note the smiley. I claim that xsdb can do as well
at "integrating a variety of applications..." with much greater
simplicity and ease of use. It also provides a very flexible medium
for providing xml-base database functionality.

And the triviality of your model theory caused a humurous
coffee/monitor interfacing issue (thanks for at least addressing the
question though).

It's simple but general enough to capture everything needed, in
particular all of SQL and more. What's wrong with simplicity?

-- Aaron Watters

[ps: my last post died, I hope this isn't a repeat ]
===
The cup holder on my computer is broken.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Could you expand please? RDF I really need help with, I agree.

How simple do you want it ? You are reinventing great chunks of RDF.
RDF itself had to reinvent these, because they were too complex to get
right the first time. Now either learn from this, or reinvent you own
wheel. I will be unsurprised if you can reinvent this wheel perfectly
on your own, but neither will I believe that you've actually done it.

If you haven't studied RDF before addressing this problem, it is not
worth discussing it further with you. It shows an arrogant and
ignorant attitude that you somehow don't need the work of many others.
It also means that there's no scope or common terminology to discuss

XQuery is a [misguided?] attempt to unify SQL with XPATH or
something.

I really hate it when people use a casual "or something" like that.

No, XQuery does not represent an evolution of XPath. The other query
approaches like Squish are even further away from it. The problem
with XPath is that it's highly syntactically-driven -- it's based on
using "XML as a simplifed SGML" rather than the more data-oriented
view of XML-Infoset. If you want to progress further like that,
towards triples, RDF, HyTime or whatever, then you must leave XPath
far behind.

So a comment of "XQuery is a [misguided?] attempt to unify SQL with
XPATH or something." makes you look like an arrogant student who
doesn't know what the competition is, but knows that the authors did
it wrong.

Yes I was deliberatively inflamatory (note the smiley) in the hopes
that I'd get a reaction (guess it worked ).

But you didn't get the reaction you hoped for.

The quote was taken from an RDF document. I have no idea what it means.

OK, so you trolled me. Well done - I fell for it.

You really don't know what RSS sets out to do do you ? Or why it's
so incredibly narrow in scope that it has absolutely no overlap with
what you're attempting to do, yet you still claim that "your way is
better".

OK, I'll say this as simply as I can:

Half-a-dozen of the smartest people I've ever met spent around two
years working out that same model theory. And you've gone and done it
in about the same space as Fermat.