the web as a database

[Christopher Browne]

On 4/25/05, Howard Gibson <hgibson-MwcKTmeKVNQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>    How about a methodically structured HTML file?

Unfortunately, this requires using a "well-defined methodology" that
can be managed consistently.

In a world where HTML is really no more than a "tag soup," that means
you can only assert anything about your own web site.  We have gotten
back onto a road where web browser implementors at least feign
interest in standards, but with the diversity of approaches to
generating 'content,' it is still pretty "soupy."

If we were all deploying documents using (say) DocBook, either in XML
or SGML flavours, THAT provides some higher level document structure
that would make it worthwhile to think about linking to particular
parts of someone else's document.  But that is only the case if the
"raw XML/SGML" is the public form.  Despite my using DocBook/SGML as a
composition form, that doesn't mean it is necessarily meaningful for
you to try to link inside the HTML results.

There is certainly a good understanding (if not consistently competent
implementation) of the highly structured data form of relational
databases.

There is definitely room for more research on "slightly structured" information.
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