With XML, is the Time Right for Hierarchical DBs?

DullTrev asks: "The hierarchical database model existed before the far more familiar relational model. Hierarchical databases were blown away by relational versions because it was difficult to model a many-to-many relationship - the very basis of the hierarchical model is that each child element has only one parent element. However, we now live in a web world that demands quick access to a variety of data on a variety of platforms. XML is being used to facilitate this, and XML has, of course, a hierarchical structure." Do you think a hierarchical database would really be a better answer for storing XML data over the existing relational counterparts?

"There have been some pushes to create pure XML databases (info on XML in connection to databases is here and info on XML database products is here) with claims that as they support XML natively, they can offer many advantages over relation databases.

Some of these claims include speed, better handling of audio, graphic and other digital files, easier administration, and handling of unexpected elements. Software AG, a German firm, produce and sell a suite of XML products, including Tamino, a native XML database. They have lots of information on why they think there database is great, not surprisingly, but no benchmarks. So, do the Slashdot community think that with XML the time has come for hierarchical databases? Or is it better simply to use a relational database that can output in XML, or script your way to achieve the same goal?"

Comments

Repeat after me ...

[Serpent Mage]

XML is not a magic bullet. Relational database won out over the Hierarchical model for a lot of reasons. For instance, there exists a number of integrity constraints with the Hierarchical model such as

1) No record occurrences except root records can exist without being related to a parent record occurrence. This means that
a) a child record cannot be inserted unless it is linked to a parent record.
b) a child record may be deleted independently of its parent however, deletion of the parent record automatically results in the deletion of all its child and descendent records.
c) the above rules do not apply to virtual child records and virtual parent records.

2) If a child record has 2 or more parent records from the SAME record type, the child record must be duplicated once under each parent record.

3) A child record having 2 or more parent records of DIFFERENT record types can do so only by having at most 1 real parent, with all the others represented as virtual parents. IMS limites the number of virtual parents to 1.

In addition to these flaws, relational databases have had over a decade to become mature, optimized, and enterprise scalable. Harddrive partitioning for such databases as oracle work out perfectly with the cylinder, sector, and tracks of a hard drive to allow for the fastest read/write times as can be possible.

Too often people see that XML "can" do so many things and decides that it should be the way things are done but XML is NOT a magic bullet and just because it has the potential to do something does not make it the best methodology for doing so.