Performance improvement for xml loads (+comments)

[Patrick Spinler]

Derek Atkins wrote:
> 
> Well, using MySQL or PostgreSQL is just one part of it.  It's a
> storage mechanism, but you still need to create the data formats that
> are stored.  You still need to define the transaction objects or split
> objects or whatever that get stored in the database.  

Well, not really.  

More specifically, on a fundimental level a database will provide a
number of predefined data types that it will deal with gracefully (int,
date, money, char, etc).  In order to gain some of the advantages of a
database, such as ease of access to the data from other applications,
you really need to use these data types.

Of course, you can store any arbitrary binary data in a database engine,
it's called a BLOB in modern parlence.  But what's the point ?  You have
to have special code to deal with it.

> So, defining a
> binary data format now would certainly be useful, IMHO, down the road
> when we move to a DBMS.

As I mention above, I disagree.

-- Pat

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  Patrick Spinler			email:	Spinler.Patrick@Mayo.EDU
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