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which is one of the documents forming the bases of SQL-ish (RDQL/SquishQL/TAP) query languages - it clearly explains what a Data Description Language (DDL) like SQL allows to abstract over triple-stores. It explains also a bit the ideas of semi-structured database vs. traditional RDBMS; it tries to explain why RDBMS are not enough for semi(un)-structured data sets like on the Web, where the schema of the information is not under control of the application and if you use 3rd normal form tables in SQL the result is *very* inefficient and expensive. It mentions the problem of tight coupling of application (e.g. JSP code) with the SQL schema it self, resulting in a lot of maintenance problems and "hard-coding" into the (e.g. Java) code the "logic" of the relation model you actually put on tables. This is very true, and is of the issues that 3rd normal form tries to address (flexibility, changing, parametric/dynamic database). But then you have that kind of orphans problems and dangling references (i.e. removes in object-related databases are "dangerous").
It also tries to go a step further to about interfacing non-RDF system to SQL-ish query (i.e. query legacy data as RDF).
Some info about JDBC (Inkling implementation) and Postgres backend (not "abusing" like we are doing); ODBC things are also mentioned.
Posted by alberto at March 30, 2003 03:50 PM