Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Michael D. Thomas" <mdthomas AT mindspring.com>]

"Databases wrestle XML "

http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=703543

I see a lot of parallels between the development of Xquery, the query language
for XML document sets, and SQL in conjunction with RDBMS's. Both were meant to
be open standards, but became fragmented with vendor extensions over time.
This article covers how the major players are attempting to differentiate.

Such differentiation is inevitable, in part, because true adherence to open
standards leads to a commodity market. It's hard for anyone to make money off
of commodities of any type. Look at airlines.

It's especially hard for software companies to make money off of commodities.
While being able to claim interoperability and openness is good,
straightforward implementation of the standards is dangerous for companies
following the pure properietary model. Thus, extensions to the "open
standards" are the key to differentiation and vendor lock-in, which are the
key to properietary model profits. This is especially true for technology
products that are building blocks for high-dollar, long-development-cycle and
mission-critical projects. In such cases, both obvious and subtle technology
lock-ins are virtually inevitable.

(As a (somewhat cynical and jaded) believer in the markets, this presents no
problem for me beyond the obvious technology and business problems. As a
technologist and a believer in the Law of Increasing Returns, I'm always
looking to understand the technologies that will be tomorrow's de facto
standards. Besides, standards are always ultimately de facto, anyway.)

There is a key difference between the Xquery evolution and the SQL evolution:
Open Source. The SQL evolution and market consolidation occurred largely prior
to the establishment of Open Source as a market force. The desires and the
needs of the Open Source community are well-aligned with the spirit of open
standards, whereas there was no such "standards bearer" for the SQL Wars.

Some revealing text from the article:

<snip/>
"The point is, users should be able to access XML data natively," said George
Demarest, senior director of database marketing at Oracle in Redwood Shores,
Calif. "Our goal ... was to make XML data basically appear within the Oracle
server as standard relational tables."

Rather than pursue its previous approach of employing multiple database
engines, Microsoft is building a 64-bit XML database -- code-named Yukon and
due for release in 2003 -- around SQL XML. "We built some additions to the SQL
language capability to return that data as XML. SQL XML is part of it; the
rest of it is focused on the ability to expose stored procedures, which are
SQL code, as Web services," said Eric Brown, product manager for SQL Server at
Microsoft in Redmond, Wash.
</snip>