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On 11/27/13 10:10 AM, Simon St.Laurent wrote: Interesting ... seems to be a very broad generalization, and I think the situation differs in different domains.On 11/26/13 7:47 PM, Uche Ogbuji wrote:Agreed - THIS!On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 1:28 AM, Michael Kay <mike@s... <mailto:mike@s...>> wrote: One thing that Jackson misses, though, is that there can be multiple hierarchic views of the data: this doesn't apply to the indexed sequential files he was originally working with, nor (directly) to XML, but it does apply when you extend Jackson to other fields. THIS! Just this! In the day job I spend a lot of time explaining to people that too many mainstream systems try to organize information with one hierarchy to rule them all, or even worse, they degenerate the one hierarchy into a tabular form. In my experience, most real world bodies of information have multiple possible hierarchical views, and an enormous number of IT problems boil down to juggling the political pressures of prioritizing one view of the data over another within an organization, and with respect to different populations served by the organization. In my view for text (hypertext, whatever), hierarchies + some light linking seems to be a pretty good model. For business process modeling, geometrical objects, social relationship graphs, maybe not. At least the links become more important than any hierarchy, which is secondary. When you import / export / transfer in bulk, you are treating your data *as a text* so the hierarchy is useful since at that moment you don't particularly care about the relationships (they are not important for the integrity of archiving/transport), you just want to treat your data as a big hunk of stuff to be moved around, saved, etc, treated as a giant unit. This idea breaks down somewhat with smaller messages since relational integrity becomes impossible to maintain across loosely-coupled systems without imposing rigid top-down constraints on the evolution of the data. But when you are computing (rendering 3d models, searching relationship graphs, performing trend analysis etc), the relationships, indexes, etc: things that cut across the hierarchy in multiple dimensions, are what matters, not the rigid immutable structure that XML models well. -Mike
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