XML size (was: no subject)

[Jean-David Beyer]

Derek Atkins wrote (in part):
> 
> > >So, while speed is ONE goal, it is not all of it.  By using a database
> > >you also:
> > >        a) obviate the need to transaction log file
> > >        b) obviate the need for "backup" files
> >
> > Don't databases keep transaction logs and backup files?  What happens
> > when the system crashes because of a power outage in the middle of
> > of a transaction?  Now you've got a corrupt binary file that contains
> > all your data and it's essentially useless.
> 
> Not per se.  They do transactional writes to the database, yes, but
> that's not the same.  If a crash occurs during a write, you will lose
> that one transaction, not the whole file.
> 
I do not know about all dbms that use an SQL interface (CLI or API), but
IBM's DB2 that I use anyway (for other dbms applications) should not
lose even one transaction, because once it is committed, it is already
in the log file, so if a crash occurs when trying to write to the
database, it can be recovered from the log file. And if it had not
gotten into the log file, the commit would have not yet completed or it
would have failed and the application would know that it did not
succeed.

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