--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "larry.potter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm not sure that we can conclude from the database realm to > the spiritual. that being said it is true that relational d.b. > is being used far more than hierarchical. The main reason is > that it was difficult to model a many-to-many relationship,
There are other reasons, speed of access being one of them, but the many-to-many thing is interesting in itself. To me it seems as if the hierarchical model is something that a seeker (and especially a deist seeker) would think up. They're always trying to "climb the tree" to reach something "higher" than themselves. But would a realized individual, who even on the level of perception relates to the many *as* him- or herself, be tempted to think hierarchically? When your entire world view is Unity, are the devatas (assuming they exist) any "higher" than you? They *are* you. :-) > However, we now that in a web world that demands quick > access to data, XML is being used to facilitate this, > and XML has, of course, a hierarchical structure and > for good reasons: speed, better handling of data elements, > easier administration, and handling of unexpected elements. I honestly suspect that XML's success so far is based on the relatively small datasets it's called upon *to* access. When dealing with small amounts of data, hierarchical structures appear fast on today's computers. But if you were trying to access and process yottabytes** of data, do you think you'd still be using XML or forcing that data to traverse a tree structure? ** Love that term, 'yottabytes' kilobyte (kB) 2^10 megabyte (MB) 2^20 gigabyte (GB) 2^30 terabyte (TB) 2^40 petabyte (PB) 2^50 exabyte (EB) 2^60 zettabyte (ZB) 2^70 yottabyte (YB) 2^80
