Mailing-List: contact dev-help@couchdb.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: dev@couchdb.apache.org
Received-SPF: neutral (nike.apache.org: local policy)
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <15ec700a0904081918j4dc53af7mab831a6fed475ad8@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20090408080746.GA7710@uk.tiscali.com>
	 <D502E63A-1006-4337-8AE6-5656BFC72FF7@gmail.com>
	 <grjktp$re1$1@ger.gmane.org>
	 <15ec700a0904081918j4dc53af7mab831a6fed475ad8@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 22:53:22 -0400
Message-ID: <64a10fff0904081953s51a476eekb40ade9d03165ad7@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Erlang vs Scala
From: Dean Landolt <dean@deanlandolt.com>
To: dev@couchdb.apache.org
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=00151750eebaeda55404671659b5

--00151750eebaeda55404671659b5
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 10:18 PM, Wout Mertens <wout.mertens@gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Daniel,
>
> Interesting, what hierarchy can you express in Sedna (XML) that you
> can't express in CouchDB (JSON)?


Let me start by saying I think json has already won the utility vs.
usability tradeoff war. That said, there is nothing you can express in json
that you can't express with xml+xsd (unweildy as this may be). But there are
things baked into xml that aren't easy (or even possible) with json --
namespaces come to mind. Things like XPath and XQuery can be bridged (or
bested) with a few client libraries (e.g. JSONPath and JSONQuery). But json
will always live in a flat namespace -- and that's part of the charm.

And let's not forget that (perhaps due largely to momentum) there's a metric
shitton of good structured data locked up in xml, xhtml, even tidyable html.
So to answer your question...*the web*. That's tough to express purely in
json -- but luckily couch is flexible enough to allow external indexing and
querying against all this tagsoup crap using something like sedna, monetdb,
etc. And will no doubt be even more so in the future. I know you were
kidding...just wanted to get across the *
we-can't-discount-xml-and-the-others* point.

--00151750eebaeda55404671659b5--