🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 22 Feb 1997 05:27:14 GMT, Joseph H Allen <jhallen@world.std.com> posted:
>In article <phrE5zB8v.DJy@netcom.com>, Paul Rubin <phr@netcom.com> wrote:
>>I continue to believe relational databases aren't a natural way to
>>represent what goes into EDI documents.
>
>Relational databases are a very general- any data structure can be mapped to
>them (structures, lists, trees, even self-referential trees like grammars). 
>Most modern databases are relational: what more natural choice could there
>be for transfering data between databases?

If the standards are directed towards *specific* algorithmic procedures and
operations, then it's quite possible for the "general" solution to not be 
compatible with the idioms of the standards.

Incidentally, you probably should be proposing use of the vCard
specification system for addresses, and vCalendar for specification of
scheduled events.  That's what's in process of becoming the IETF standard
for dealing with "address" and "schedule" information.

Not so incidentally, people with "rolodex" and "calendar" apps should
probably look seriously at the respective standards as well in order to
improve interoperability.  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say: "You want
to send some addresses, and you're using Frankin Ascend?  Send me a .vsc
file; Ical can handle that..."

-- 
Christopher B. Browne, cbbrowne@unicomp.net, chris_browne@sdt.com
"When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows', people just stare at
you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*" 
  - Linus Torvalds      URL: http://www.conline.com/~cbbrowne/