- From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
- To: xml-dev@l...
- Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2016 11:36:11 -0400
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Finally, an xml-dev thread that brings me joy! (Not sarcasm.
Real joy.)
On 10/12/2016 8:36 AM, Ihe Onwuka
wrote:
No and this is what I tried to
convey in my original (perhaps too pithy) response. Schemaless
means you can load your data into the repository without
defining a schema a priori (in contrast to relational).
That is as earth shattering and
profound as being able to put data into Excel without
defining the column headings or having any at all.
That's an excellent comparison. While I spend a lot of time in
Excel spreadsheets that are tightly structured - and frequently wish
at least some of them lived in even more structured relational
databases - there are endless cases where being able to just doodle
in the spreadsheet is what gives a spreadsheet power.
Schemaless really means schema
deferred. It gives you the luxury of allowing schema
definition to leak into your application code so when
someone asks you for the business rules governing your data
you give them your (these days _javascript_) code.
"Deferred" is an excellent way to put it. It's not so much that no
one will ever want to apply a schema to the data or derive a schema
from it. Rather, it's that decisions about schemas can come later,
in the field, made by people consuming or creating documents. They
may not even be formal decisions.
On single-person projects, that deferral creates a lot of freedom
without much mess. Even in larger projects, component approaches
can create more flexible spaces within larger structures.
I think we may finally be reaching the cultural point in computing
where those freedoms are appreciated rather than cursed as
disorderly.
Thank you all,
Simon
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